OnlyFans, the web’s kingdom of smut, could also be altering fingers quickly. Reuters reports that the porn platform’s dad or mum firm, Fenix Worldwide, Ltd., is in talks to promote the enterprise for some $8 billion to a U.S. investor group.
The New York Publish previously reported that Leonid Radvinsky, the billionaire proprietor of the location, was trying to “money out,” however had not but discovered a purchaser. Reuters now identifies not less than one potential purchaser because the Forest Highway Firm, an funding agency primarily based in Los Angeles that’s reportedly main an investor group that wishes to purchase the porn platform. On its web site, Forest Highway describes itself as “not your common funding agency” and says it embraces “complexity and creativity to extract worth the place others see limitations.” The location additionally expresses an curiosity in “media & leisure” and “digital belongings.”
Not a lot else is thought concerning the talks. Citing sources acquainted with the potential deal, Reuters writes that Fenix can also be speaking to different events. Gizmodo reached out to OnlyFans for extra data.
OnlyFans was based in 2016 and rose to prominence in the course of the pandemic by serving to attractive internet customers fulfill their libidos while in any other case avoiding human contact. Since then, the enterprise has solely continued to develop. Apart from a weird brief moment in 2021 (when the corporate bizarrely claimed it will ban “sexually specific content material”), it has served as a premier vacation spot for soiled content material, and has helped re-shaped the porn trade by its gig-worker mannequin. Final yr, the corporate reported that funds made by the platform had surged by 19 % since 2023, topping some $6.6 billion.
Radvinsky bought the corporate in 2019 and it has made an absolute killing since then. Bloomberg reported final yr that the mogul had made $1 billion in three years by company dividends from the enterprise.
The corporate has additionally been the topic of appreciable criticism, in addition to quite a few authorized complaints. Critics accuse the platform of being frequented by sex traffickers, and declare that the location has additionally develop into a portal for child sexual abuse material. The corporate was additionally lately sued by two clients who have been outraged to discover that they might haven’t been messaging with actual fashions (creators typically outsource their buyer communications to third-party companies).
