An unremarkable office building with Beast logos on the glass doors is filled with workers on a muggy afternoon in Greenville, North Carolina. Inside, whiteboards are cluttered with ideas for chocolate flavors, thumbnail sketches, and budget projections that resemble spreadsheets from studio films rather than YouTube planning. The fact that this doesn’t feel like a “creator studio” is difficult to overlook. It has the vibe of a headquarters.
Born Jimmy Donaldson, MrBeast began as a teenager who became fixated on view counts. According to reports, Beast Industries, his holding company, made $473 million in 2024. He ceased to be merely a YouTuber somewhere between staging a live Squid Game and counting to 100,000 on camera.
| Name | MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) |
|---|---|
| Born | 1998, Wichita, Kansas, U.S. |
| Primary Platform | YouTube |
| Subscribers (Main Channel) | 300M+ (approx.) |
| Holding Company | Beast Industries |
| 2024 Revenue | $473 million (reported) |
| Major Brands | Feastables, Beast Games, MrBeast Burger |
| Estimated Valuation | $5.2 billion (reported fundraising round) |
| Official Website | https://www.mrbeast.store |
He turned into an economy. Early mythology is still important. In 2017, Donaldson recorded a 40-hour endurance stunt that seemed ridiculous at the time: counting to 100,000. The video became widely shared. The discipline that goes into it is frequently disregarded: he allegedly reverse-engineered the algorithm, tested titles, and studied thumbnails in great detail. It seems like he was more interested in perfecting distribution at the time than he was in gaining notoriety.
And power is distribution. The initial engine was built by YouTube ad revenue, but the empire was built through reinvestment. Donaldson has stated that he puts almost all of his money back into production, in contrast to many other creators who cash out. larger sets. bigger rewards. More show. A game show worth $5 million. Describe philanthropic challenges in detail. As I’ve watched this develop over time, it feels more like vertical integration than content scaling.
The production is financed by the attention. The brand is developed by the production. The company sells goods. The goods attract more attention.
According to reports, his chocolate business, Feastables, made about $250 million in 2024. It isn’t influencer merchandise. That’s consumer packaged goods on a significant scale, vying with established brands for shelf space. Brightly colored bars can be seen staring back from the checkout aisles of Target and Walmart. The packaging is whimsical. One suspects that the margins are significant.
It appears that investors think this is just the beginning. The media and venture capital communities were taken aback by a reported $5.2 billion valuation in a fundraising round. Some referred to it as frothy. Others likened it to Disney in its early stages, with personality-based intellectual property that has grown into tangible goods and experiential endeavors.
Both of these interpretations could be accurate. The growth of Donaldson has not been without its challenges. MrBeast Burger, the ghost kitchen experiment, made a ton of money in the beginning but eventually got into legal trouble over brand management and quality control. Despite breaking viewership records, his Amazon Prime competition show Beast Games reportedly lost millions of dollars. Rivals voiced concerns about dangerous circumstances. Uncomfortable questions were raised by the lawsuits.
When a creator begins working on an industrial scale, this is what occurs. Errors are no longer tweets. They turn into lawsuits.
The ambition hasn’t decreased, though. The Middle East is part of the global expansion of Feastables. The concept for a theme park in Riyadh called Beast Land suggests something more akin to experiential retail than online content. The conversion of attention into physical space is reminiscent of Walt Disney’s early transition from animation to theme parks.
However, this engine is algorithmic, in contrast to Disney. Donaldson is aware that YouTube accounts for 2% of all human time. It’s a common statistic at press conferences, but he made a business out of it. Every video serves as a marketing event in addition to being entertainment. He is also reaffirming a brand that is based on spectacle and generosity when he donates $1 million. He is enhancing emotional loyalty when he finances clean water projects or plants trees.
Some critics refer to it as stunt philanthropy. Advocates refer to it as “impact at scale.” The model’s long-term viability and its unique connection to Donaldson’s intensity are still unknown. He once acknowledged in public that he doesn’t have a life outside of work. One-mindedness like that is what creates empires. People are also burned out by it.
The structure of the MrBeast economy sets it apart from previous influencer waves. This is more than just a podcast and merchandise store. Media production, CPG, live entertainment, licensing, and possibly finance make up this multi-SKU ecosystem. Teams manage supply chains, legal compliance, brand partnerships, and analytics. The machine runs ahead of the creator, who sits in the middle.
We have the impression that we are witnessing the model for the upcoming generation of media conglomerates, which will be corporately run but characterized by personality.
Distribution and talent were previously under the control of traditional studios. Distribution is now directly controlled by talent. It feels more like Hollywood negotiating with new power brokers than creators entering the Hollywood market when Netflix signs YouTube collectives or Amazon invests in Beast Games.
It’s unclear if this model can be replicated by others. Prime Hydration became a retail powerhouse thanks to Logan Paul and KSI. Emma Chamberlain started her own coffee business. Ryan’s World grew into an empire of toys. Few, however, function at MrBeast’s scale, where a single upload can produce tens of millions of views in a matter of days, boosting investor confidence and product launches at the same time.
Here, it’s difficult to overlook how easily attention turns into money.
The MrBeast economy, which prioritizes distribution over infrastructure, is a reflection of the larger creator era in many respects. What started as a teenager researching the YouTube algorithm has evolved into a multinational corporation with workers, factories, supply agreements, and plans for global expansion.
Whether MrBeast is still a YouTuber is not the question. He is. The camera remains in place.
In retrospect, counting to 100,000 seems like the initial proof of concept for something much bigger, and the true question is whether this model will serve as the model for the media landscape of the ensuing ten years, when the distinction between creator and corporation completely vanishes.
