Forbes Puts MrBeast at $300 Million. His YouTube Business Loses Money.
The Forbes Top 50 Creators hit a collective $1.02 billion in 2026. Number two on the list, Dhar Mann, earns $65 million and just signed a Fox deal for 40 microdramas. The content was always the pitch.
Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast, topped the Forbes 2026 Top Creators list with an estimated $300 million in earnings. Per Tubefilter, Forbes unveiled the ranking on June 23 at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, where the combined earnings of the top 50 crossed $1 billion for the first time. That figure is up 20 percent from $853 million in 2025 and 80 percent from the $570 million the list totaled when it launched in 2022.
Here is the detail that reframes all of it. Foodbeast reported in March 2025, citing Bloomberg, that Feastables, Donaldson's chocolate brand, made roughly $20 million in profit on $251 million in 2024 sales. His YouTube operation ran at an $80 million loss that same year, with individual videos costing $3 million to $4 million to produce. The content builds the audience. The brand collects the revenue.
The $1 Billion List
Complex reported the full top 10: MrBeast at $300 million, Dhar Mann at $65 million, Steven Bartlett at $52 million, Markiplier at $38 million, Rhett and Link at $37 million, Codie Sanchez at $31 million, Mark Rober at $30 million, iShowSpeed at $30 million, Druski at $20 million, and Charli D'Amelio at $18 million. Forbes ranks creators on estimated earnings, entrepreneurship, and clout, defined as a combination of followers and engagement rate. The figures are estimates, not audited financials.
Forbes cited a range of drivers for the collective jump: creator-led films reaching traditional box office audiences, IP deals with Netflix and Amazon, brand expansions into retail and production studios, FAST TV channel growth, and a shift toward longer-term brand partnerships rather than one-off sponsored posts.
Dhar Mann: Listen First, Build Second
The most instructive example in the top 10 is not the one at the top. Dhar Mann, ranked second at $65 million, runs a 200-person production company that publishes more than 300 million views of content per week across 13 languages. His videos are morality tales, three-to-six-minute short films with titles like "Bullied Kid Becomes CEO" that run as free content on YouTube and Facebook.
Most traditional studios create content and hope the audience follows. We listen to the audience and follow what they want.
The Fox network announced a deal with Dhar Mann Studios to produce 40 microdramas. Business Today reported he also holds an NFL "Chief Kindness Officer" title. His search interest peaked at an index of 100 on October 17, 2026, based on Ad Watch News's own DataForSEO trend measurement, and sat at 57 on November 6, well above his baseline a year ago. The demand is there, well before Fox airs a single episode.
The Content Is the Sales Funnel
The 2016 Forbes piece that first described influencers as "the new brands" framed it as a prediction. By 2026 it has become a business model with balance sheets. The creators at the top of the Forbes list are not primarily ad revenue businesses anymore. Beast Industries, Donaldson's holding company, is valued at $5 billion. Steven Bartlett's holdings company is reportedly worth $425 million. iShowSpeed has deals with Dick's Sporting Goods, Beats By Dre, and Doritos, plus a FIFA World Cup 2026 tour. Markiplier's film Iron Lung generated $50 million at the box office and came with a YouTube distribution deal.
The structure is consistent: build an audience with free content, then sell them products, equity, or access to what you built. The audience is not the revenue. The audience is what makes the revenue possible.
Bloomberg projected Feastables to triple in size from 2025 to 2027, per the Foodbeast reporting. If that holds, the chocolate company Donaldson runs alongside his YouTube channel will be one of the fastest-growing food brands in its category, funded by zero marketing spend beyond the videos that run at a loss.
Ad Watch News is an independent commentary site. No affiliation with Forbes, MrBeast, Dhar Mann, Feastables, Fox, or any party named here. This piece draws on published sources listed below.
Sources & further reading
- Tubefilter: Forbes Top 50 Creators 2026 Hits $1 Billion (June 23, 2026)
- Complex: MrBeast Leads Forbes 2026 Top Creators List With $300 Million in Earnings (June 24, 2026)
- Business Today: The Creator Economy Just Crossed $1 Billion for the First Time (July 1, 2026)
- Foodbeast: MrBeast Is Making More Money From Chocolate Than YouTube (March 31, 2025)
- Wikimedia Commons: Dhar Mann (Dhar Mann, CC BY-SA 4.0)
