Jimmy Donaldson wants to turn Beast Industries into the biggest creator-led enterprise we’ve ever seen. At the New York Times‘ DealBook Summit, the man known as MrBeast explained how he plans to pull off that feat.
Alongside Beast Industries CEO Jeffrey Housenbold, Donaldson joined DealBook Founder Andrew Ross Sorkin for a two-on-one conversation. The star creator and his chief executive explained the three-pronged structure they are using to move beyond YouTube and expand into fields as diverse as telecommunications, influencer marketing, and confections.
The best-known of those three prongs encompasses the MrBeast content empire, which now reaches a YouTube-leading 453 million subscribers (and counting) through its primary hub. That segment currently accounts for half of Beast Industries’ revenue, but Donaldson wants to bring more variety into the company while also making it sustainable outside of his personal appearances in videos.
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“I hope people like me, but it’s not fundamentally why we get 200 million views every video,” Donaldson told Sorkin. “It’s because we do these crazy concepts.”
The other prongs of Beast Industries introduce the variety Donaldson is seeking. The division dedicated to consumer goods will soon encompass a mobile phone company to go along the consumables brand Feastables and other existing bets.
The third head of the Beast Industries cerberus is something brand new. Donaldson and Housenbold plan to launch a platform that will play the matchmaker between creators and major corporate sponsors. Housenbold said that his team is “building a two-sided marketplace in a global creator platform, matching creators with Fortune 1000 marketers who want to be able to access the creator influencer economy in an efficient way to be able to build demand for their products and services.”
Specific details related to that marketplace haven’t been made public yet, but it would serve as a competitor to a growing number of similar platforms. Agentio and ShopMy are two companies that have recently raised eight-digit funding rounds by positioning themselves as efficient matchmakers within the creator economy.
To break into that industry, Beast Industries doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Just like ViewStats is “stats platform plus MrBeast” and Vyro is “clipping tool plus MrBeast,” the matchmaking service could attract users by offering the trade secrets of the world’s most successful creator.
The more pertinent question is, “what about the investors?” Will they show up to provide Beast Industries with the capital a $5 billion company needs? And will the public ever get a piece of Beast Industries through an initial public offering?
On the IPO front, Housenbold offered a tentative yes. “At some point, we want to be able to give the 1.4 billion unique people around the world who has watched Jimmy’s content the last 90 days a chance to be owners of the company,” he said on the DealBook stage.
The first few creator IPOs have produced mixed results. For FaZe Clan, a public offering turned into an infamous flop. But ‘Baby Shark’ creators Pinkfong have fared a bit better in the first month post-IPO.
The numerous controversies swirling around the MrBeast name could complicate Donaldson’s funding plan, but bets against the North Carolina-based world beater haven’t panned out thus far. In 2025, MrBeast was the biggest thing on YouTube, just like he was in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. If he could put together the biggest creator-led IPO ever, that would only be fitting.
