Many fans are curious about Fabian Thylmann's financial success in April 2026. Our team analyzed the latest data to provide a clear picture of their income.
What is Fabian Thylmann's net worth?
Fabian's contribution to NATS earned him a small windfall. More importantly, the software's backend admin gave him an unprecedented behind-the-scenes view "God-view" of the entire adult website commerce industry. He could see exactly which websites were actually making money, how much money, and from what ads that were leading to the actual sales. With these insights, he decided to buy his own adult site. His first acquisition was a German site called PrivatAmateure.
Fabian Thylmann was born in June 5, 1978 in Dusseldorf, Germany. He started programming at the age of 17 and soon found himself conversing in chat rooms with owners of adult websites. One of the most common complaints at the time among adult webmasters was their inability to receive proper credit for referring a customer who signed up for a paid account or purchased a product. Som in the late 1990s, Fabian set out to solve that problem.
In March 2010 Thylmann paid $140 million for Pornhub.com and its related properties, including Brazzers. After the acquisition, Thylmann changed the company's name from Mansef to Manwin.
While Thlymann was busy rolling-up the adult internet ecosystem, over in Montreal, Canada, two entrepreneurs, Stephane Manos and Ouissam Youssef were operating their own adult empire, with their two crown jewel properties Brazzers and Pornhub. They operated their empire under the corporate named "Mansef", which is a portmanteau of their respective last names,Mansos + Youssef.
In 2011, Manwin raised over $360 million from a conglomerate of over 100 investors that included Clobeck Capital, Fortress Investment Group, Cornell University and JP Morgan. With a new war chest in the bank, Fabian and Manwin proceeded to go on yet another supercharged shopping spree for adult properties.
His solution was a piece of software he called "NATS" which stood for "Next-generation Affiliate Tracking Software." NATS finally allowed advertisers to track when users clicked their affiliate ads so they could be paid a commission for the sale referral. It was revolutionary at the time, especially for adult sites which had been blocked from the traditional online display advertising business and desperately needed a way to track who deserved a commission for generating a sale or a subscription sign up.
Fabian Thylmann is a German adult internet entrepreneur, software engineer and investor who has a net worth of $300 million. Fabian Thylmann earned his net worth as the founder and former CEO of adult website conglomerate Manwin, which is now known as MindGeek. Fabian became a porn kingpin after creating an affiliate tracking software that would prove to be revolutionary for the adult world. Fabian eventually sold his stake in the software, which is called NATS and is still very much in-use today, and proceeded to roll-up hundreds of adult brands. This roll-up eventually became the largest adult website conglomerate in history. In 2013 Fabian sold his share of Manwin to senior management for $100 million at a time when he was facing tax evasion charges. The company was subsequently rebranded as MindGeek. MindGeek continues to be one of the largest internet empires in history. Today its brands include Brazzers, RedTube, YouPorn, Xtube, Reality Kings and Pornhub. The exact combined monthly traffic of these brands is not known, but it has been estimated at the tens of billions of monthly visitors. Despite being the most powerful person in the adult industry at one time, Thylmann reportedly lives a very normal life with a wife and two kids. He is now an angel investor who operates out of Belgium and runs a start-up incubator.
In 2006 Thylmann sold his stake in the umbrella company that owned NATS. With even more money in the bank, his buying-spree accelerated, but now his acquisitions were much bigger. One of his biggest acquisitions during this period was Xtube.
Ultimately, Fabian Thylmann's financial journey is a testament to their success.
Disclaimer: All net worth figures are estimates based on public data.
