Jimmy Donaldson has compiled quite the resume since he began making videos as a teenager in his Greenville, North Carolina, bedroom. The world’s most popular YouTube channel. A successful snack line. A new Amazon reality competition that (despite mixed critical reviews) has been watched more than 50 million times in the past month.
A content empire built on his nickname and brand, MrBeast.
On Monday, the 26-year-old Donaldson wrote on X, “OK fine, I’ll buy TikTok so it doesn’t get banned.” It received 37 million views. The following day, he added “Unironically I’ve had so many billionaires reach out to me since I tweeted this, let’s see if we can pull this off.”
Then on Wednesday, MrBeast upped his effort to purchase the imperilled short-form video platform. “We just got out of a meeting with a bunch of billionaires,” he began.
“TikTok, we mean business. This is my lawyer right here. We have an offer ready for you. We want to buy the platform. America deserves TikTok. Give me a seat at the table. Let me save this platform.”