MrBeast's 29th Birthday Countdown

MrBeast Timeline

About MrBeast

MrBeast turned escalating challenge videos and headline-grabbing giveaways into the most-subscribed individual channel on YouTube, then expanded into Feastables and the Beast Philanthropy channel, which funds food banks and giving projects.

Forty hours of counting

Jimmy Donaldson uploaded his first videos as a kid in Greenville, North Carolina, then spent years with friends obsessively studying what made YouTube videos spread. The experiment that finally worked was gloriously absurd: in January 2017 he filmed himself counting to 100,000, a stunt that took more than 40 hours and went viral. From there the formula never changed, just the scale — bigger challenges, bigger giveaways, and production budgets that eventually rivaled television shows.

Half a billion subscribers

MrBeast passed T-Series in 2024 to become the most-subscribed channel on all of YouTube, and on June 12, 2026, he became the first individual creator in the platform's history to reach 500 million subscribers, livestreaming the moment to hundreds of thousands of viewers. His Amazon competition series Beast Games pushed the giveaways to a new extreme, with 1,000 contestants and the largest cash prize ever awarded on television.

A charity built to give everything away

Beast Philanthropy is a full YouTube channel whose revenue goes entirely to charity, anchored by a food pantry in eastern North Carolina that distributes more than 100,000 meals a month. With fellow creator Mark Rober he also launched three record-breaking fundraisers: #TeamTrees planted 20 million trees, #TeamSeas pulled 30 million pounds of trash from oceans and rivers, and 2025's #TeamWater raised $40 million for WaterAid — more than $90 million between them.

Quick facts

• Born May 7, 1998, in Wichita, Kansas
• First creator in YouTube history to reach 500 million subscribers, in June 2026
• His 2017 breakout video was counting to 100,000, which took more than 40 hours
• Beast Philanthropy's food pantry distributes more than 100,000 meals a month
• His #TeamTrees, #TeamSeas and #TeamWater campaigns raised over $90 million combined
• Founded the snack brand Feastables in 2022

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MrBeast's ventures

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