MrBeast becomes world's youngest self-made billionaire

YouTuber MrBeast, 27, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, has become the only billionaire under 30 who didn't inherit his wealth. He is also the eighth youngest billionaire across the globe, with an estimated $1 billion fortune, Celebrity Net Worth states.

MrBeast was born on May 7, 1998, in Greenville, North Carolina and started his YouTube journey at 12 under the username "MrBeast6000". He is a graduate of Greenville Christian Academy and emphasised on content creation full-time after dropping out from a college.

His YouTube channels, comprising MrBeast, Beast Reacts, MrBeast Gaming, and MrBeast Philanthropy, together have more than 508 million subscribers.

MrBeast's main channel has 397 million subscribers, becoming the most-subscribed YouTube channel worldwide.

How did MrBeast rise to fame?

His early content included video game commentary, reaction videos, and humorous compilations. MrBeast's first gained widespread attention in 2017 with a viral video titled “Counting to 100,000”, which took him 44 hours to accomplish and garnered over 21 million views. Building on that success, he went on to create other viral stunts, such as counting to 200,000, reading the entire dictionary, and taking on unusual challenges like watching a music video on loop for 10 hours.

He had specialised in what is now called as “stunt philanthropy” by 2018. That is creating videos that include attention-grabbing challenges with giving away huge cash giveaways. One early popular video showed him giving $1,000 to strangers. In following videos, the amounts escalated dramatically, eventually reaching hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars.

In December 2019, he organised a challenge where participants had to keep their hand on a $1 million pile of cash, and the last person to take their hand off won the money.

MrBeast is known for putting nearly all of his video earnings back into producing new content. In November 2022, reports surfaced that he was looking for investors in his business, valuing it at $1.5 billion.

In 2023, Time magazine included MrBeast in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The next year, he claimed the top spot on Forbes' list as the highest-earning YouTube creator of 2024, with an estimated net worth of $1 billion.

By early 2024, court documents related to his MrBeast Burgers venture revealed that his business empire brought in $223 million in revenue in 2023 and was projected to reach $700 million in 2024. These figures confirmed that MrBeast officially became a billionaire in June 2024 at the age of 26. Among the 16 billionaires worldwide under the age of 30 at that time, MrBeast stood out as the only one to have built his fortune entirely on his own, without any inherited wealth.