Telegram making hundreds of millions in revenue from ads & subscriptions wasn’t on my radar. Neither was the fact that they’d been offered $30B valuations by VCs. This implies a path to billions in revenue is clear or at least plausible.
However it currently it isn’t profitable.
https://www.ft.com/content/8d6ceb0d-4cdb-4165-bdfa-4b95b3e07b2a