Moelis & Co. to help OnlyFans sell majority stake despite porn stigma: sources | Latest Tech News
Talks to sell a majority stake in OnlyFans are being led by Moelis & Co., the investment bank based by Wall Street legend Ken Moelis, The Post has realized.
Moelis bankers engineered the potential deal for the money-minting smut web site – in which San Francisco-based Architect Capital may take a 60% stake in a tie-up that values it at $3.5 billion – after at least one other bank shied away from representing OnlyFans, said a source acquainted with the matter.
Moelis – whose 68-year-old, billionaire founder was a protege of junk bond king Michael Milken – hopped into mattress with OnlyFans after the London-based porn platform failed to discover an eligible suitor over a lot of the past 12 months, said two people with data of the potential deal.
Talks to sell a majority stake in OnlyFans are being led by Moelis & Co., The Post has realized. AFP via Getty Images
Ditto for top-tier investment banks, who proved to be squeamish about dirtying their arms with the porn business, insiders said.
“The company had been struggling to find a buyer largely because of the porn stigma. But it has incredible financials that are very attractive,” one of the sources told The Post.
“Everyone has to make decisions about balancing business potential with negative associations and Moelis has made their feelings clear.”
Moelis, Architect and OnlyFans declined to remark.
OnlyFans has confronted legal issues for years. In one high-profile case, a girl claimed in a 2022 Florida lawsuit that she was raped by two males who posted a video of the act to OnlyFans, charging a month-to-month subscription to view it. The plaintiff said OnlyFans violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act by facilitating the publishing of the video and for profiting off it.
Moelis – whose billionaire founder Ken Moelis (above) was a protege of junk bond king Michael Milken – hopped into mattress with OnlyFans after the London-based porn platform failed to discover an eligible suitor over a lot of the past 12 months. REUTERS
OnlyFans disputed the allegations and a decide finally dismissed the claims, citing Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act that broadly protects web sites from legal responsibility for user-generated content.
In 2023, a whistleblower filed a criticism with the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network alleged Mastercard and Visa failed to stop their networks from laundering funds from little one inappropriate abuse materials and intercourse trafficking on OnlyFans, according to a GWN report.
A Mastercard spokesman said the credit card giant has zero tolerance for criminality on its community. Visa didn’t immediately reply to a request for remark.
A spokesperson from Treasury’s FinCen unit declined to remark on confidential whistleblower submissions but said it really works with financial establishments and law enforcement to forestall illicit exercise.
Moelis is now at the middle of deal talks with Architect, particulars of which had been reported last month by The Wall Street Journal.
OnlyFans has confronted legal issues for years. diy13 – stock.adobe.com
“It’s not surprising that mainstream financial institutions are finding the impressive financials of so-called vice companies too enticing to pass up,” said Catharine Dockery, the founder and normal companion of New York-based Vice Ventures, which invests in startups in stigmatized industries including alcohol, psychedelics and intercourse merchandise.
In the enterprise market, buyers are more and more warming up to companies that had been traditionally shunned, she added.
Moelis is led by Navid Mahmoodzadegan, one of the bank’s co-founders, after Moelis stepped down as CEO last fall, transferring into an government chairman function.
Architect’s top brass is no stranger to controversy. Founder and CEO James Sagan has been a key investor in e-cigarette company Juul Labs, which was blamed for igniting a teen vaping disaster and weathered years of legal battles.
Architect’s head of technology, Hoan Ton-That, joined the firm last 12 months after founding Clearview AI, which has scraped tens of millions of pictures off Facebook and LinkedIn and offered them to law enforcement companies. The company has been banned in a number of international locations in Europe, as properly as in Australia, according to authorities rulings in those international locations reviewed by the Post.
Architect’s head of technology, Hoan Ton-That, joined the firm last 12 months after founding Clearview AI. Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
OnlyFans earned $666 million in working revenue on $1.4 billion in income in the 12 months ended Nov. 30 2024, according to UK company filings. The company logged $449 million of gross sales prices and $197 million of administrative bills. OnlyFans had only 46 staff, the filings show. About 64% of its income is generated in the US.
OnlyFans proprietor Leo Radvinsky, who bought a majority stake in 2018 for an undisclosed quantity from its British founders Tim and Guy Stokely, has earned almost $1 billion in dividends over a two-year period ending Nov. 30, 2024, the filings show.
OnlyFans takes a 20% cut from its roughly 4.6 million creators, per the filings and the positioning is just not on App shops so no income is shared with Apple or Google.
Still, a report this 12 months by cost processing company Myntpay discovered that retailers offering grownup content get dinged with larger transaction charges – often 5-10% per transaction in contrast to 2-3% for conventional e-commerce – which may translate to a price low cost come time for a sale or public itemizing.
OnlyFans, which is owned by dad or mum company Fenix International Ltd, had engaged in talks for a sale last 12 months at an $8 billion valuation to a group of buyers led by Los Angeles investment firm Forest Road Company. That deal never got here together.
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