Rise to Fame
Before the $5M prize shows and chocolate empires, there was a video of a teenager counting to 100,000. It took him 40 hours to film and went viral in January 2017. Crohn's disease diagnosed in ninth grade had already stripped him of his baseball future, and he'd redirected everything into YouTube. The counting video worked because he'd spent years studying what made videos trend. By 2018, he'd given away $1 million on camera. The philanthropy was the best marketing he'd ever done.
In the Spotlight
At 27, he runs the most-subscribed individual channel on YouTube (465 million as of early 2026), a snack brand (Feastables) reportedly crossing $500 million in annual revenue, and Beast Industries, which raised $200 million at a $5 billion valuation in January 2026. The Amazon reality show Beast Games broke Prime Video records with 1,000 contestants and a $5M prize, then attracted a class-action lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and unsafe conditions on set. Fortune estimated his net worth at $2.6 billion in early 2026. The empire runs on his face, which is both the strategy and the risk.
Side Notes
Every eight weeks, an IV drip of Remicade suppresses his immune system to keep the Crohn's at bay. The tradeoff is that he gets sick constantly. He's said he's had COVID six times and contracted shingles. Before the diagnosis in ninth grade, he was a serious baseball player. The disease took 50 pounds off him and ended that path. He started the YouTube channel on a secondhand laptop, partly because it was something he could do from bed on bad days.