MrBeast: Age, Net Worth, Biography and Facts

MrBeast (James "Jimmy" Donaldson) is an American YouTube creator, the owner of the most-subscribed channel in the world, the founder of Beast Industries and the host of the Prime Video competition "Beast Games." This profile covers his biography, his most famous videos, his businesses including Feastables chocolate, his charity campaigns, his marriage to Thea Booysen and his latest news as of October 2026.

Age and earnings

MrBeast was born on May 7, 1998 in Wichita, Kansas and is 28 years old.

Forbes estimated his earnings at $300 million on its 2026 Top Creators list (June 2026) (Forbes). Figures like this are published estimates, not official statements of wealth.

Who is MrBeast

MrBeast (real name James Stephen "Jimmy" Donaldson; born May 7, 1998, in Wichita, Kansas) is a YouTube content creator, entrepreneur and philanthropist. In June 2026 his main channel became the first channel run by an individual creator to pass 500 million subscribers, far ahead of the second-placed channel, T-Series. MrBeast videos are known for huge budgets, extreme challenges, large cash prizes and charity stunts, and his opening line, "I'm MrBeast," has become one of the most recognizable intros on the internet.

Donaldson runs Beast Industries, which owns his YouTube channels, the snack and chocolate brand Feastables, and other ventures, and he created and hosts "Beast Games" on Amazon Prime Video. Time named him to its list of the 100 most influential people in 2023, in a profile written by Mark Rober, and Forbes ranked him the top-earning creator on YouTube.

MrBeast in Numbers

Metric	Value (as of October 2026)
Real name	James Stephen Donaldson
Birth date and place	May 7, 1998, Wichita (Kansas, USA)
Main channel	More than 500 million subscribers (passed in June 2026), the most on YouTube
Other channels	MrBeast Gaming (over 44 million subscribers), Beast Reacts, Beast Philanthropy, MrBeast 2 and dubbed language channels
Company	Beast Industries (Feastables, MrBeast Burger, Lunchly with partners)
Charity campaigns	Team Trees (2019), Team Seas (2021), Team Water (2025, about $40 million)
TV show	"Beast Games" (Prime Video, since December 2024)
Wife	Thea Booysen (married July 2026)

Childhood in North Carolina

Donaldson was born in Kansas and grew up in Greenville, North Carolina. His mother, Susan Parisher, served in the US Army, and the family moved several times during his early childhood; his parents later divorced. He has an older brother, CJ, who also runs YouTube channels. He graduated from Greenville Christian Academy, a private school, in 2016, where he played baseball and basketball. He briefly attended college but dropped out to focus on YouTube full time, against his mother's wishes. As a teenager he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, which he has spoken about publicly.

Path to YouTube (2012–2020)

He began posting on YouTube in February 2012, at 13, under the name MrBeast6000. His early videos were Minecraft and Call of Duty gameplay, commentary on other creators and estimates of how much YouTubers earned. For years he and a small group of friends studied what made videos succeed on the platform, often for hours a day.

His breakthrough came in January 2017 with "I Counted to 100,000!," a video in which he spent about 40 hours counting, which drew millions of views. Stunts with ever-larger budgets followed, from giving away $10,000 to strangers to tipping delivery drivers thousands of dollars. Longtime friends including Chandler Hallow, Karl Jacobs, Nolan Hansen and Chris Tyson became regular cast members. He launched additional channels such as MrBeast Gaming, Beast Reacts and Beast Philanthropy, the last of which funds food banks and other aid through its own ad revenue.

Most-Subscribed Creator (2021–2026)

In November 2021 he released "$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!," a recreation of the Netflix series with 456 real contestants. It became one of the most-watched videos in YouTube history. In 2019 he had famously bought billboards and radio ads to support PewDiePie in his subscriber race against T-Series, a contest that helped make subscriber counts a global talking point. Three years later, in November 2022, he overtook PewDiePie himself as the most-subscribed individual creator, and on June 1, 2024, he passed the Indian music label T-Series to become the most-subscribed channel of any kind. He reached 400 million subscribers in June 2025 and 500 million in June 2026, when YouTube CEO Neal Mohan presented him with a custom award.

MrBeast Videos and YouTube

His most famous videos include "I Counted to 100,000!" (2017), "Last To Leave Circle Wins $500,000" (2020), "$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!" (2021), "1,000 Blind People See For The First Time" (2023), in which his team funded cataract surgeries, "I Spent 7 Days Buried Alive" (2024) and "Ages 1 - 100 Fight For $500,000" (2024). His latest videos are posted on the main MrBeast channel, usually every few weeks, with lengthy production cycles and budgets that he has said can exceed several million dollars per video. Dubbed versions are published in many languages, which helped make the channel global.

Beast Games

On December 19, 2024, Amazon Prime Video premiered "Beast Games," a reality competition in which 1,000 contestants competed for a $5 million prize, which the show described as the largest single cash prize in television history. Donaldson has said the first season lost tens of millions of dollars. In 2024 some contestants filed a lawsuit alleging poor treatment during filming, which the production disputed. Season 2, built around a "Strong vs. Smart" concept with 200 contestants and another $5 million prize, premiered on January 7, 2026, and ended on February 25, 2026. Amazon had already renewed the show for a third season in May 2025.

Feastables: MrBeast Chocolate

In January 2022 Donaldson launched Feastables with the MrBeast Bar, a chocolate bar made with a short list of ingredients. Its launch borrowed from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory": buyers could find golden tickets for a chance to compete for a chocolate factory, in a video judged by chef Gordon Ramsay. Feastables chocolate is now sold in large US retail chains such as Walmart and Target, as well as in other countries, and the range has grown to include peanut butter cups, cookies and other snacks. It has become the largest business within Beast Industries.

Beast Industries

Beast Industries is the holding company for Donaldson's media and consumer businesses. In 2024 he hired the technology investor Jeff Housenbold as chief executive to professionalize the company as it expanded beyond YouTube. Besides the channels, Feastables and the Beast Games production, its ventures include Viewstats, a YouTube analytics tool built from the methods his team used internally, and MrBeast Lab, a toy line developed with Moose Toys. The company has raised outside investment to fund this expansion. Donaldson remains the creative lead and the public face of every brand, and he has said that his long-term ambition is to build a company on the scale of Disney, with characters, products and entertainment built around his audience.

MrBeast Burger, Lunchly and the MrBeast Store

MrBeast Burger launched in December 2020 as a delivery-only "ghost kitchen" brand operated through restaurants partnered with Virtual Dining Concepts. In 2023 Donaldson sued the company, saying poor food quality was damaging his reputation; the brand continued in a revised form, with physical locations such as the restaurant at the American Dream mall in New Jersey. In 2024 he launched Lunchly, a packaged lunch kit, with fellow creators Logan Paul and KSI. The official MrBeast store, ShopMrBeast, sells clothing and merchandise tied to his videos.

Charity: Team Trees, Team Seas and Team Water

In October 2019, together with former NASA engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober, he launched Team Trees, which aimed to raise $20 million to plant 20 million trees with the Arbor Day Foundation; the goal was reached within about two months. In 2021 the pair launched Team Seas, which raised about $30 million to remove plastic and trash from oceans, rivers and beaches with Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup. In August 2025 they launched Team Water with WaterAid, which raised more than $40 million in 31 days to bring clean water to about two million people, with YouTube and Google matching the first $2 million in donations. In 2026 Donaldson reported that the campaign had brought clean drinking water to more than 225,000 people in its first year. His Beast Philanthropy channel continues to publish charity projects.

How MrBeast Makes Videos

Donaldson's working method is unusually data-driven. He has described testing dozens of thumbnails and titles for a single upload, obsessing over audience retention in the first seconds of a video and rewriting concepts until they can be explained in one sentence. His production company employs hundreds of people, and large shoots can take months to plan, with custom sets, island locations and full-scale replicas. A leaked internal handbook he wrote for new employees in 2024, which urged staff to prioritize retention and to "go crazy" on ambitious ideas, circulated widely online and was studied by marketers well beyond YouTube. He reinvests most of the money his channels earn into future videos, a strategy he credits for the channel's growth and which he has said leaves him with relatively little cash on hand despite the size of his businesses.

Awards

Year	Award
2020–2023	Streamy Award, Creator of the Year (several times)
2022–2025	Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award, Favorite Male Creator
2023	Time 100: Most Influential People in the World
2024	Forbes: top-earning YouTube creator
2025	Time 100 Creators
2026	First individual creator to reach 500 million YouTube subscribers

Movies and Media

Donaldson has not starred in feature films. His screen work is concentrated on YouTube and "Beast Games," though he has appeared on talk shows and in many other creators' videos. His production methods have been analyzed widely in business media, and a leaked internal production guide he wrote for employees became a widely discussed document about how to make viral videos.

Criticism

As his audience has grown, so has the attention paid to how his company operates.

His rise has come with scrutiny. Critics have questioned whether filming charity for views exploits the people he helps, a criticism he has rejected by pointing to the scale of aid delivered. In 2024 former collaborators and contestants raised allegations about workplace culture and conditions on set, and his company brought in an outside law firm to investigate some of the claims. Lunchly also faced criticism over its nutritional content. Donaldson has said he is working to improve practices as his company grows.

Wife: Thea Booysen

Donaldson describes himself as an introvert who rarely spoke about his private life early in his career. In 2022 he began dating Thea Booysen, a South African-born content creator and gaming streamer, after they were introduced by a mutual friend. He proposed on Christmas Day 2024 and the couple announced their engagement soon after. They married in July 2026 during a week-long celebration with about 70 guests on Richard Branson's Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands. Donaldson shared the news on Instagram with the caption "I found MrsBeast," and Booysen changed her Instagram name to Thea Donaldson.

Quick Facts

Real name	James Stephen "Jimmy" Donaldson
Born	May 7, 1998
Birthplace	Wichita, Kansas, USA
Hometown	Greenville, North Carolina
Activity	YouTube creator, entrepreneur, philanthropist
Subscribers	More than 500 million (most on YouTube)
Companies	Beast Industries: Feastables, MrBeast Burger, Lunchly
Show	"Beast Games" (Amazon Prime Video)
Wife	Thea Booysen (since 2026)

Timeline

• May 7, 1998: Born in Wichita, Kansas.
• February 2012: Started posting videos as MrBeast6000.
• 2016: Graduated from Greenville Christian Academy.
• January 2017: "I Counted to 100,000!" brought his breakthrough.
• October 2019: Launched Team Trees with Mark Rober.
• December 2020: Launched MrBeast Burger.
• November 2021: Released "$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!"
• January 2022: Launched Feastables.
• November 2022: Became the most-subscribed individual creator.
• 2023: Named to the Time 100.
• June 1, 2024: Became the most-subscribed channel on YouTube.
• December 19, 2024: "Beast Games" premiered; proposed to Thea Booysen on Christmas Day.
• August 2025: Team Water raised more than $40 million.
• January 7, 2026: "Beast Games" season 2 premiered.
• June 2026: Passed 500 million subscribers.
• July 2026: Married Thea Booysen on Necker Island.

Photo: Fidias, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons