OnlyFans brought in $1.55 billion last year with roughly 42 employees. Now it wants to become a bank.
CEO Keily Blair told Fortune this month that the company plans to offer financial services to its roughly 2.5 million active creators, many of whom get turned away by mainstream banks. And she’s openly talking about going public. “We’re thinking about that pathway towards an IPO and working toward that as a potential goal for the company,” she said, pointing to Reddit’s 2024 IPO as the closest model.
It’s the company nobody mentions in a board meeting. It might also be one of the most efficient businesses on the planet.
The Numbers Nobody Says Out Loud
Revenue per employee that makes Big Tech look bloated. At about 42 employees, OnlyFans generates around $37.6 million in revenue per person, according to Barchart data reported by Storyboard18. Nvidia: $3.6 million. Apple: $2.4 million.
It keeps 20% of everything. The $1.55 billion came from a 20% cut of the $7.85 billion fans spent on the platform, Fortune reported. Operating profit hit $709 million, up 6.5%, Forbes reported.
It made thousands of millionaires. Since 2016, 5,076 creators have earned at least $1 million, and payouts have totaled $30 billion, Tubefilter reported.
The owner cashed out, then died. Owner Leonid Radvinsky took about $709 million in dividends in the months before he died of cancer in March at 43, Forbes reported. Afterward, the company agreed to sell a 16% stake to Architect Capital in a deal valuing it at around $3.1 billion.
Why a Bank, of All Things
OnlyFans knows what it’s like to be cut off. The company was once nearly locked out of mainstream financial services, a threat to its whole business that led its original founders to sell, Fortune reported.
Blair’s pitch is simple: banks think her creators are risky, but OnlyFans can see exactly how they earn. The platform has “full visibility into the content that’s being created,” she said. The gap, she argued, is between perceived risk and actual risk.
In other words: the banks didn’t want this money. So OnlyFans is going to hold it itself.
Sources: Fortune; Forbes; Storyboard18 / Barchart; Tubefilter.
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