Jimmy Donaldson, the creator known as MrBeast, said the YouTube video he plans to release Saturday cost roughly $10 million to produce, took years to develop, and consumed more than 1,000 hours of his personal time.

“This Saturday we upload our biggest YouTube video ever,” Donaldson wrote on X on September 16. “It’s been in the works for years, I’m personally over a thousand hours deep into it, spent around $10,000,000 on it, and I literally have dreams about the video lol.” 

He did not describe the video’s subject, format, or any partners involved. In a follow-up post, he tempered expectations for its performance: “It prob won’t preform that well but it’s something I care a lot about and I hope my passion for it shines through. I’m excited :D”

The post had drawn 7.2 million views at the time of writing. No premise, sponsor, or exact production breakdown has been disclosed.

A Pattern of Big Bets

The announcement extends a track record of Donaldson investing heavily in individual projects ahead of uncertain returns. Beast Industries’ media arm, which includes his YouTube channels and television work, generated an estimated $250 million in revenue in 2024 but posted a net loss of nearly $80 million, according to Bloomberg reporting. Beast Industries had posted net losses across three consecutive years. Feastables, Donaldson’s chocolate brand, turned a profit of more than $20 million on comparable revenue over the same period, partially offsetting the media arm’s losses.

The company’s Amazon Prime series “Beast Games” is the clearest precedent for the pattern: production costs reportedly exceeded $100 million across ten episodes, including a prize fund Donaldson raised from $5 million to $10 million. “It was not a good financial decision to make Beast Games,” he said on “The Diary of a CEO” podcast. “I lost money. I would have more money if I didn’t film it.” 

Beast Industries CEO Jeff Housenbold has framed that spending as deliberate strategy rather than a miscalculation, telling Fortune the company treats philanthropy and large-scale production as tools for audience growth: “The question we ask ourselves is, ‘Can we combine capitalism and altruism in a way that’s a win-win?’ We believe the answer is yes.” 

Beast Industries was seeking a roughly $5 billion valuation in a funding round, according to Bloomberg.

Not everyone views the escalating scale of Donaldson’s productions as sustainable. Bill Zimmerman, a Penn State professor who studies the Creator Economy, told Fortune that Donaldson’s growth may eventually hit a ceiling, pointing to the physically extreme format of some of his challenge videos. “Those things are highly watchable, but I think these big videos that just rack up the views also present this voyeuristic situation where you’re watching somebody push their physical limits,” Zimmerman said.

Court filings from Donaldson’s litigation with a former food-industry business partner, reported by Business Insider, show how the company monetizes its reach elsewhere. As of early 2024, when Donaldson had roughly half his current subscriber count, a 30- to 45-second sponsored segment on his main channel was priced at around $2.5 million, and a TikTok or YouTube Shorts video paired with a main-channel ad ran an additional $500,000. Board materials cited in the filings showed the company had contracted $91 million in brand deals heading into 2025, including $15 million from T-Mobile and $12.5 million from Amazon.

Donaldson’s audience has continued to grow through 2026. He became the first individual creator to reach 500 million YouTube subscribers in June, after adding 117 million subscribers in 2025 alone, the largest single-year subscriber gain in the platform’s history, according to data published by fan-run analytics account MrBeast Statistics. Roughly 40% of his audience falls between the ages of 13 and 17, with another 20% between 18 and 24. That growth has coincided with an expanding roster of brand partnerships: Google signed Donaldson to a multi-year deal spanning Gemini and Google Health on September 2, making him the face of a new Gemini advertising campaign built around his stunt videos.

Saturday’s release will be the first indication of how the video performs against that $10 million outlay, and whether it follows the revenue pattern of “Beast Games” or fares differently.

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