Leonid Radvinsky, owner of OnlyFans, dies aged 43
Leonid Radvinsky, the owner of OnlyFans, has died of cancer at the age of 43, the company announced on Monday.“We are deeply saddened to announce the death of Leo Radvinsky.Leo passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer,” said a spokesperson for the company, best known for subscriptions to pornographic content creators.“His family have requested privacy at this difficult time.”Radvinsky, a Ukrainian-American billionaire with a net worth of about $3.
8bn as of May 2025, acquired Fenix International Limited, OnlyFans’ parent company, in 2018.He served as the company’s director and majority shareholder.Born in Odesa, he grew up in Chicago and studied economics at Northwestern University.According to the Wall Street Journal, he began running pornography sites as a teenager.In recent months, Radvinsky had engaged in talks to sell a 60% stake in OnlyFans in a sale that would have valued the company at about $8bn.
According to OnlyFans, Radvinsky had moved his ownership to a trust in 2024.OnlyFans, founded in 2016 and best known for pornographic material, allows adult film actors and sex workers to make money from posting content on the subscription-based platform.The company typically takes a 20% cut of payments, leaving the remaining 80% for creators, which resulted in dividends of hundreds of millions of dollars for Radvinsky.The UK-based company grew in popularity during the pandemic and has established itself as a way to generate a significant income online.In addition to superstar adult content creators, its creators also include Olympians and teachers who said their day jobs failed to pay them enough to make ends meet.
OnlyFans has said it is focused on empowering women and content creators to post sexually explicit content in a safe online environment.Though OnlyFans has tried to expand beyond sexually explicit content, pornographic material remains its best-known product.In 2021, it briefly announced that it would ban sexually explicit content before quickly reversing course, and some creators on the website promote various interests such as photography, fitness and makeup.Radvinsky’s company was not without controversy as well.A 2024 Reuters investigation reported on women who said they had been sexually enslaved to make money from the site.
MPs urge UK government to halt contract giving Palantir FCA data access
MPs have urged the government to halt its latest contract with Palantir after the Guardian revealed that the US spy-tech company is to gain access to a trove of highly sensitive UK financial regulation data.The Financial Conduct Authority, the watchdog for thousands of financial bodies from banks to hedge funds, has hired Palantir to apply its AI systems to two years’ worth of internal intelligence data to help it tackle financial crime.But the Liberal Democrats on Monday called for a government investigation into the contract, which the party said could be “a huge error of judgment”, while the Green party said it should be blocked over Palantir’s links to Donald Trump.Questioned on whether the UK was becoming “dangerously overreliant” on US tech companies including Palantir, Keir Starmer told parliament he would prefer to have more domestic capability but added: “I don’t think we’re overreliant.”Palantir was founded by the Trump-backing billionaire Peter Thiel and it supports the US and Israeli militaries and the ICE immigration crackdown
AI boom risks widening wealth divide, says BlackRock’s Larry Fink
The boom in artificial intelligence risks widening inequality, with only a handful of companies and investors likely to reap its financial rewards, the BlackRock chief executive, Larry Fink, has said.The boss of the $14tn (£10.4tn) asset manager used his annual letter to investors on Monday to highlight potential hazards around the exponential growth in AI, which has attracted rapid investment and become, he said, “central to strategic competition” between global powers such as the US and China.“The massive wealth created over the past several generations flowed mostly to people who already owned financial assets,” Fink said. “And now AI threatens to repeat that pattern at an even larger scale
Leonid Radvinsky, owner of OnlyFans, dies aged 43
Leonid Radvinsky, the owner of OnlyFans, has died of cancer at the age of 43, the company announced on Monday.“We are deeply saddened to announce the death of Leo Radvinsky. Leo passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer,” said a spokesperson for the company, best known for subscriptions to pornographic content creators. “His family have requested privacy at this difficult time.”Radvinsky, a Ukrainian-American billionaire with a net worth of about $3
‘Kids say they take a quick look at TikTok’: a new kind of distracted driving is on the rise
As watching videos, using touchscreens, and even livestreaming behind the wheel become more common, experts warn of increased risk of crashes Jackie was on her way to a doctor’s appointment last fall when she realized her Uber driver’s eyes were not fully on the road. “He had a video playing on his phone and was intermittently looking at it,” she said. Jackie, who is 32 and lives in New Jersey, could not tell exactly what the driver was watching, but she remembers seeing shots of people talking – she guessed it was a video podcast. “I was definitely feeling a lot of dread and distress.”As they continued on their 40-minute drive down the New Jersey Turnpike – a hectic highway that is not easy driving – Jackie considered saying something
iPhone 17e review: Apple upgrades its cheapest new smartphone
The cheapest new iPhone has been upgraded for this year with a faster chip, double the storage, automatic portraits and MagSafe, providing even more of the core Apple smartphone experience for less.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.The iPhone 17e is an upgraded version of the mid-range “e” line launched last year with the first iPhone 16e and is the latest member of the iPhone 17 family
Campaign groups rail against Palantir, but the UK contracts keep coming
Palantir’s latest UK contract takes the AI and data analytics company into the heart of one of Britain’s biggest industries: financial services, which accounts for 9% of the economy.The Miami-based company embedded its technology in the NHS in 2023, the police in 2024 and the military in 2025. Land and expand, they say in the tech industry. Palantir has followed the script, building contracts worth more than £500m.Now in 2026, its deal with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to dive into the terabytes of information it gathers gives it yet another unparalleled view of the inner workings of the British authorities
Reeves slips into yoga voice to try to soothe fears over costs of Trump’s war | John Crace
Labour lost white working-class voters to Greens in Gorton and Denton, party analysis finds
Reform UK suspends mayoral candidate over comments on Jewish group
UK defence firms ‘bleeding cash’ as delayed spending plan leaves industry in ‘paralysis’
Rachel Reeves rules out universal support on energy bills
Ed Davey accuses Reform UK and Tories of importing ‘Trump-style divisive politics’