YouTube creator MrBeast has been keeping viewers engaged for years and this has brought him $54 million in earnings last year, more than any YouTuber ever, according to Forbes magazine.

The 23-year-old has over 88.1m subscribers and is very popular for money giveaways and charitable initiatives. He also heads a 50-employee company that last year launched MrBeast Burger, a virtual restaurant chain, and encompasses Beast Interactive Games.

A recent video of his — a re-enactment of the games from Netflix hit Squid Game with a $456,000 prize — has fetched him over 200m views. In fact, most of his videos easily cross 50m views.

Close on the heels of Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast) is Jake Paul (the controversial YouTuber/boxer, who earned an estimated $45 million last year), game vlogger/comedian/ podcaster Markiplier ($38 million) and longtime comedy duo Rhett & Link ($30 million).

Last year, MrBeast took home the YouTube Streamy Awards creator of the year trophy and had teamed with YouTube creator Mark Rober for the fundraising initiative #TeamSeas (to remove trash from waterbodies around the world).

MrBeast took to posting on YouTube at the age of 13 and his early content focused on video game playthroughs and videos that tried to estimated the wealth of popular YouTubers. Among his breakthrough moments is a 2017 video that came after he had spent five years on the platform, and showed him counting to 100,000, which took him more than 40 hours to complete.

“I really want to be Elon (Musk) one day,” he wrote on Twitter in 2020. He has also listed the Tesla chief as his “dream collaborator”.