Telegram has over 800 million active users and is not yet profitable

Chat app Telegram has more than 800 million monthly active users and gains more than 2.5 million new users every day. The service is not yet profitable, but the company raised $270 million this week to become profitable.

It is not clear when Telegram reached the milestone of 800 million monthly active users; CEO and founder Pavel Durov reports only that this milestone was achieved ‘earlier this year’. In June last year gave the service to 700 million monthly active users to have. Durov does say that there are 2.5 million new user registrations every day, although this does not necessarily mean monthly active users. For comparison: WhatsApp indicated in 2021 that it had more than two billion users.

Telegram’s “tremendous growth,” as Durov says, is driving up storage and network traffic costs. To make the platform profitable, the service introduced a Premium subscription last year. With this subscription, users get certain new features before other users, can send larger files, and get more emojis and stickers.

Durov doesn’t say how many subscribers there are, but does say this subscription was off to a “good start.” The Telegram founder also says that it would have been impossible to be profitable after just one year. The company would be ‘closer to profitability’ than competitors such as Twitter and Snap, Durov claims based on ‘absolute numbers’.

To fund Telegram’s growth, the company raised $270 million through bonds this week. This amounts to approximately 240 million euros. Durov says he has purchased about a quarter of these bonds himself. The CEO does not say how he will use this money.