The history of Telegram and TON began back in 2018, when Telegram raised $1.7 billion from 171 investors for future Gram tokens. After a SEC lawsuit, the launch was canceled, and a significant portion of the funds had to be returned.
➠ Based on a reconstruction from documents, investors were later refunded about $1.45 billion. At the same time, by January 2020, Telegram had already spent around $405 million of the funds raised on developing TON and working on the messenger itself.
➠ After that, the main source of Telegram’s funding became bonds. In 2021–2025, the company issued them with a nominal value of $4.051 billion, but it actually received about $3 billion in cash. The reason for the difference is that part of the 2025 issuance involved exchanging old debt for new debt, and some bonds were sold below par.
➠ Now the old bonds have already been repaid. As of the end of September 2026, Telegram still has $1.7 billion in debt at 9% per year, with maturity in 2030. Only the interest on it costs about $153 million annually.
But the most interesting part starts with TON.
Telegram has gradually become one of the largest sellers of its own TON/GRAM. According to the figures cited, in just 2024–2025 Telegram sold tokens for more than $1.151 billion.
This is a crucial figure: the money did not go to TON Foundation and not to the network itself — it was received directly by Telegram as the owner and seller of the tokens.
➠ Separately, there are ecosystem venture funds. In 2022, commitments of about $340–476 million were announced, but how much of this money actually reached the projects is publicly unknown.
➠ Another 527 million TON were donated to TON Foundation by holders in 2022. At that time, their value exceeded $1 billion, but these were already existing tokens, not a billion new dollars that entered the network.
➠ In 2025, it was reported that 11 major venture funds own TON worth more than $400 million. But here too, we’re talking about the value of their positions, not $400 million raised by TON Foundation.
📌 Therefore, the popular wording that “almost $8 billion was invested in Telegram and TON” is misleading. In one figure, returned investments, debt financing, token purchases, token donations, and the value of assets on a specific date are mixed together.
But there is a more important takeaway.
Telegram and TON, which after 2020 went down different legal paths, by 2026 have again become tightly linked economically and product-wise. Telegram sells GRAM, uses the network for advertising and Mini Apps, has become a major validator, and is preparing a native Gram Wallet directly inside the messenger.
So today the main asset of TON is no longer the number of billions that ever appeared around the project. The main asset is the potential access of the blockchain to an audience of more than a billion users on Telegram.
And now the key question for GRAM is whether this huge audience can turn from potential users into real on-chain activity and sustained demand for the token.
