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MrBeast won the battle for attention. His next challenge: turning a profit.

The 27-year-old became the world’s top YouTuber by pushing videos to outrageous heights with elaborate sets, gargantuan cash prizes, and stunts like blowing up a bank and racing a car against a cheetah.

As one former MrBeast staffer put it: The video idea that was “bigger” and “crazier” would generally win the day.

Over the past year, Beast Industries — the holding company for MrBeast’s businesses — has made a concerted effort to introduce financial discipline into the creative calculation as it pitches investors on building Disney for the next generation.

Jeffrey Housenbold, who joined Beast Industries in May 2024 and was elevated to CEO in September, is leading the new era of discipline.

“My goal is to make everything we do profitable,” Housenbold said in an interview. “In the past, it was just about ideas and the quality of the content. I’m moving the organization to produce great content that is also on time and on budget.”

Beast Industries wasn’t profitable last year, and a big reason was because of its media business, according to a leaked investor deck from early 2025 viewed by Business Insider. Its revenue from YouTube and other media content was about $224 million in 2024, and media costs over that period were around $344 million, the deck said.

The deck forecast that MrBeast’s media business would swap those losses for profit this year, projecting $317 million in media revenue against $292 million in costs. It’s unclear whether the projections for this year have changed since the deck’s creation.

The challenge for Housenbold and MrBeast’s corporate team has been instilling financial discipline in a content studio long defined by awe-inspiring spectacles and the impression that money is no object. Can you kill the losses without killing the magic?

Housenbold has tightened processes across the business, from production to negotiating back-office services like insurance and software. The company is also seeking to use AI where possible instead of expanding head count, a person familiar with the business said.

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Housenbold was formerly CEO of Shutterfly, which he took public in 2006 and helmed for 11 years. He also worked as a venture capitalist, helping lead SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund and spearheading its investments in 17 companies, including DoorDash and Compass.

No more paying retail

One cost-cutting example under Housenbold: Beast Industries used to pay retail price for many products featured in videos, including beverages, gym equipment, and dozens of Teslas that MrBeast has given away over the years. Now, a new eight-person brand partnership team aims to secure these goods — or close alternatives — for free or strike deals where MrBeast gets paid to use them.

The company has also renegotiated ad contracts, increasing the advertisers’ cost to reach 1,000 viewers by as much as 65% depending on the category, the person familiar with the business said.

“We select partners that are authentic and will resonate with our loyal viewers, so we will never work with a cringe product,” Housenbold said, using the adjective that MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is known to call a no-go idea. “Sometimes Jimmy has a personal preference, but we have a choice in who to work with, and the economics must pencil out, too.”

Housenbold also created a team dedicated to calculating the feasibility of a video with a focus on budget. And before building a video set, the company considers whether it can be repurposed for a future project.

Many of the team’s cost-saving measures would be considered standard on a Hollywood production. Donaldson, who launched the MrBeast YouTube channel over a decade ago as a teenager, developed his media company by following his own instincts, even if they bucked traditional media norms. With more than 350 staffers as of April, the company is now starting to follow a more traditional playbook.

“It’s getting more corporate,” the ex-staffer said. “People were used to the Wild West, and now you can’t run a company this size that way.”

Cutting costs without spoiling MrBeast’s big-spender reputation

The MrBeast brand is built around extravagance. Whether Donaldson visits a $250 million private island, launches an ambitious fundraiser to clean up the ocean through his charity organization, Beast Philanthropy, or hands out cash prizes, money is often front and center in videos.

“Money is an aspirational thing that everyone wants,” a second former staffer said. “This is why this is the most popular YouTube channel in the world.”

Donaldson is often willing to scrap a video if it doesn’t meet his standards, even if he’s already sunk tens of thousands into the project, former staffers said. He’s also willing to spend lavishly in pursuit of his creative vision.

Donaldson has talked openly about overspending on his Amazon competition show “Beast Games.”

“I lost tens of millions of dollars on that show,” he said on a podcast this year, adding that sets for the first two episodes cost over $29 million in total. “I’m an idiot.”

Beast Industries doesn’t rely solely on its media business to make money. It has other ventures like its Feastables chocolate bars business, which, along with other MrBeast products, drove nearly half the revenue in 2024 and was profitable, per the investor deck. The company also has a MrBeast Lab toy line, with an associated animated show in the works.

As it diversifies, the company will need to control media spending to hit the financial targets set out in the leaked investor deck.

A third former staffer previously told Business Insider that the team holds itself “accountable to making the best version” of everything. People close to the company say that principle won’t change as it pushes for profitability. Trimming costs while maintaining MrBeast’s reputation as YouTube’s biggest spender will be the company’s challenge moving forward as it looks to deliver for investors.

Peter Kafka contributed reporting.