Jimmy Donaldson — better known as MrBeast — may soon be competing with Ryan Reynolds on your phone bill. As Business Insider viewed in a leaked investor deck from early 2025, the world’s most-subscribed-to YouTuber is laying the groundwork to launch his own phone company by 2026.
MrBeast’s apparent plan of attack
No, he will not be building his own cell towers
Donaldson’s plans likely do not mean he would build a new carrier network, but rather the company would create a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), essentially a rebranded phone service piggybacking off an existing carrier’s infrastructure.
There are plenty of MVNOs out there already, and a host of good reasons to choose one. It’s a shortcut into telecom that’s already paid off for one celebrity. Ryan Reynolds’ Mint Mobile became the model’s poster child, eventually selling to T-Mobile in 2023 in a deal worth up to $1.35 billion.
Donaldson isn’t exactly shy about branching out. His company, Beast Industries, already spans chocolate bars (Feastables), a toy line, and even a Lunchables competitor called Lunchly. Each venture leans on the same strategy: turn Donaldson’s 400 million-strong YouTube audience into customers. A phone service is just another extension of that playbook. Even if just 1% of his subscribers signed up, he’d have a base that most MVNO startups would kill for.
Still, launching a telecom brand is a different beast (pun fully intended). The investor deck suggests no immediate rollout — 2026 is the target — and sources close to the company stressed the project isn’t a top priority yet. But the leaked materials show Donaldson’s team is seriously evaluating how to pull it off.
How Donaldson could score big with an MVNO
Carriers like T-Mobile and Verizon already run turnkey MVNO programs, which handle the hard stuff like billing and customer support. That would let MrBeast focus on his core advantage: marketing. “The ultimate objective is to focus on the marketing and sales and outsource everything to a third party,” MVNO consultant Alex Besen told Business Insider.
The big question is whether Beast Mobile — or whatever it ends up being called — can move beyond being a novelty. Ryan Reynolds made Mint Mobile more than a celebrity side hustle by leaning into quirky, viral advertising and genuinely competitive pricing. Donaldson, with his massive reach and talent for spectacle, may have an even bigger advantage. But the telecom space is unforgiving, and even 400 million fans won’t fix a bad service plan.
