MrBeast: How teen YouTuber became a global creator CEO and his UAE connection

Dubai: When it comes to YouTubers in the UAE, one name always steals the spotlight: MrBeast. With over 450 million subscribers, he’s a global phenomenon. But his story isn’t just about stunts or generous giveaways; it’s about how a YouTuber manages a business empire.

And in a place like the UAE, where ambition meets opportunity, his journey hits closer to home than you might think.

Who is MrBeast?

MrBeast, born Jimmy Donaldson in 1998 in Wichita, Kansas, grew up in Greenville, North Carolina, and started making videos at just 13. His early work was simple—gaming clips and commentary—but even then, he was obsessed with the numbers: How to get views, keep attention, and work the algorithm.

Furthermore, in a Forbes interview, he had revealed that mastering the platform’s algorithm takes nothing short of a lifestyle—years of obsessive trial and error, constant learning, and relentless experimentation. As a teen, he spent countless hours “studying YouTube” and fine-tuning his craft.

Today, his days are almost entirely consumed by his channel, with the YouTube grind driving him like an unstoppable addiction—he even joked that his entrepreneurial energy is like a “cocaine” habit. For MrBeast, success on the platform is less a job and more a full-on obsession.

On the Colin and Samir Podcast in 2023, he admitted his life had become completely consumed by his work. “People shouldn’t be like me,” he said, modestly. “I don’t have a life, I don’t have a personality.”

Moreover, he has long been known for the meticulous attention that he gives to every detail of his videos, especially thumbnails. According to Business Insider, his team often creates dozens of thumbnail variations for each video and edits them for brightness, clarity, and consistent branding, with his face prominently featured to maximize click-through rates, as a 2021 report in Business Insider read.

The process even extended to experimenting with AI-generated thumbnails through tools like ViewStats, which allowed the team to test performance and optimize viewer engagement. Moreover, Social Media Today in 2023, the effort and cost behind these thumbnails can be substantial, reflecting the precision and strategy that have helped MrBeast build his global audience.

That breakthrough

His breakout moment came in 2017 with a video simply titled Counting to 100,000. The challenge took him 40 hours to complete, and the clip has since been viewed tens of millions of times.

That video marked a turning point. From then on, MrBeast’s content grew bigger, louder, and more ambitious. He gave away cars and houses to strangers, buried himself alive for 50 hours, recreated Squid Game in real life, and staged massive competitions where the last person standing walked away with thousands in cash.

He has said that nearly every dollar he earns goes straight back into his next idea, creating a reinvestment cycle that fuels his channel. “I want to make the best videos possible,” he has repeatedly said. “That’s all I care about.”

From YouTuber to CEO

Beyond his viral videos, he has turned his YouTube fame into a sprawling business empire. Beast Industries, his holding company, generated $473 million in revenue in 2024, encompassing his media division and consumer brands like Feastables, as quoted by Business Insider.

Feastables alone brought in over $250 million in 2024 and is expanding into the Saudi market. Beyond food, MrBeast is branching into experiential ventures with his upcoming theme park, Beast Land, in Riyadh. From giving away cars and houses online to building multiple revenue-generating businesses, he exemplifies how creators can transform digital fame into real-world empires.

A perfect fit for Dubai’s vision

MrBeast has visited Dubai before, most notably for the 1 Billion Followers Summit, an event that gathers the world’s top digital creators.
The summit’s goal is to help influencers build sustainable careers, the same thing MrBeast has mastered.

When MrBeast speaks about building businesses beyond YouTube, it echoes the UAE’s message: Creators should think like entrepreneurs.

The UAE loves YouTube

Another reason MrBeast has become so popular in the UAE is the country’s strong love for YouTube. By late 2025, the platform had reached 8.37 million users in the UAE, accounting for 74.1% of the nation’s internet population, according to Digitalreportal.

MrBeast’s videos—dramatic, generous, and full of heart—resonate perfectly with the UAE’s young, bilingual audience. They’re entertaining, easy to follow, and relatable, even without relying on deep cultural references.

Kindness connects cultures

Moreover, there's a cultural link.

MrBeast has built an image of generosity. He plants trees, builds wells, donates to families, and helps communities.

In 2019, MrBeast launched the #TeamTrees fundraiser in partnership with Mark Rober. The goal was to raise 20 million US dollars to plant 20 million trees. Ultimately it succeeded, with support from creators worldwide.

This year MrBeast launched #TeamWater in collaboration with WaterAid, aiming to raise 40 million US dollars to provide clean drinking water to millions.

He has founded Beast Philanthropy a charity organisation that hosts most of his charity drives.

"When we help people (curing 1,000 blind people, building 100 houses, 100 wells, etc) people get mad and say I shouldn’t be doing this and governments should. Yes, ideally a YouTuber isn’t the one fixing these issues but I’m not just gonna stand by and do nothing," MrBeast has said on the social media platform X.

In the UAE, where community support and giving hold cultural weight, this approach fits perfectly with the country’s own values. When he launched his '1 Billion Acts of Kindness' campaign with UAE partners, it matched with local values around philanthropy.

For many fans here, MrBeast represents not just entertainment, but empathy in action.

A new generation of creator-entrepreneurs

MrBeast isn't alone in this. Logan Paul and KSI built Prime Hydration into a massive brand. Emma Chamberlain has her coffee company. Ryan's World turned a kid's YouTube channel into a retail empire. The pattern is everywhere now: big creators launching their own products.

What makes MrBeast stand out is the sheer size of what he's built. He's not just selling t-shirts with his logo, he's running multiple companies at once.

What makes MrBeast stand out is how big his businesses have become. He's not just selling products with his face on them, he's running several real companies at once.

Although all the figures are mostly estimates or reports, in 2024, his main company Beast Industries made about 473 million US dollars according to Business Insider. His chocolate brand Feastables alone brought approximately in around 250 million US dollars according to The Economic Times. They're expecting to hit 900 million US dollars next year again said Business Insider. Whether other creators can do the same thing, or if you need his level of fame and money to pull it off, nobody really knows yet.

But it's a model the UAE clearly finds interesting. As the region attracts more creators, the goal seems to be to use Dubai as a base to build global brands, not just post content.

Why it matters

For the UAE, MrBeast functions as a case study. He shows what's possible when online attention converts into actual business infrastructure. That's the pitch Dubai is making to creators worldwide: come here, build companies, not just channels.

Whether this will work at every scale remains to be seen.

As more creators set up shop in Dubai, they're watching what works and what doesn't. Not copying the playbook exatly, but adapting the core idea that content can be a starting point, not the end goal.

Where MrBeast goes next, whether it's expanding into new markets, opening that Saudi theme park, or trying something entirely different will tell us a lot about how sustainable this creator-to-CEO model really is. And the UAE, positioning itself as the global hub for this new economy, will definitely be paying attention.

The writer is a trainee at Gulf News.