Leonid Radvinsky, who retains 75% ownership of OnlyFans’ parent company, wants to sell the platform. An initial public offering (IPO) is on the table. But don’t go looking for OnlyFans in your Robinhood account just yet.

The front runner in the race to buy OnlyFans is Forest Road Company, an investment firm that “invests, operates, and advises in non-correlated yet highly transformative sectors,” according to their LinkedIn. From a growth perspective, it makes sense to sell to a VC firm instead of an initial public offering. VCs are adept at identifying market trends, and can offer the capital needed to iterate with agility while navigating regulatory challenges.

Having an executive team of attorneys at the helm has made OnlyFans more attentive to safety and privacy than other social media platforms, but has it come at the cost of growth? Its earnings into the billions don’t seem to suggest so. Still, some overly conservative decision-making has landed OnlyFans in the headlines before. In August of 2021, they announced that they would no longer allow adult content. Clearly, the decision didn’t stick. Following backlash from creators and users, they had to walk back the new content policy less than a week after announcing it.

In a 2024 interview with the Financial Times, CEO Keily Blair referred to the company’s UK roots and its aim to be “the safest social media platform.” Blair said, “We don’t categorize our creators by the content they produce so we don’t know what proportion are creating adult content.” Still, the amount of adult content on the platform has made it a household name and cultural shorthand for “homemade porn.” Payment processors and banks have refused to do business with creators, even with Blair herself.

OnlyFans’ $8 billion valuation, nearly six times its 2022 EBITDA, is ambitious compared to competitors like Patreon, which saw its valuation drop from $4 billion to $1.4 billion. And no matter what Blair says, it’s hard to argue against adult content being responsible for OnlyFans’ high valuation. A sale to a VC firm instead of an IPO could mean gaining access to capital needed for growth.

And if OnlyFans gets the money and clears the regulatory hurdles needed to grow, how will the platform change? Will its product and engineering get a significant investment, or will its new owner double down on privacy and security?

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