[19][20] Donaldson is the founder of MrBeast Burger, Feastables, and a co-founder of Team Trees, a fundraiser for the Arbor Day Foundation that has raised over $24 million for its campaigns, and Lunchly, a food and snack brand similar to Lunchables.

[27] In September 2024, Donaldson was one of the subjects of a class action lawsuit that alleged widespread mistreatment, sexual harassment, and unpaid expenses and wages on his ongoing reality television series, Beast Games.

[35] After dropping out of college, Donaldson and his friends attempted to analyze and understand YouTube's recommendation algorithm to create viral videos.

[46][47] In March 2019, Donaldson organized and filmed a real-life battle royale competition in Los Angeles with prizes totaling $200,000 (two games were played, each awarding $100,000) in collaboration with Apex Legends.

[33] In April 2020, Donaldson created a rock, paper, scissors competition stream that featured 32 influencers and a grand prize of $250,000, which, at the time, became YouTube's most-watched live Original event with 662,000 concurrent viewers.

[72] On June 2, 2024, Donaldson surpassed India-based music label and film production company T-Series for the title of the most subscribed channel on YouTube, at 267 million.

[17] Donaldson's videos leverage YouTube's recommendation algorithm to go viral, mainly by maximizing click-through rate and viewer retention.

[83] In June 2020, Donaldson, in collaboration with Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF, released a one-time multiplayer mobile game titled Finger on the App.

[88] In August 2022, Donaldson announced that he would bring a MrBeast Burger shop to the American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, near New York City, to be the location of his first U.S. restaurant.

[90][better source needed] The video, released in June 2022, contained a series of elimination challenges where the winner won the choice of the chocolate factory or a $500,000 cash prize.

Michelin Star chef Gordon Ramsay was featured as a judge in the final challenge of the video and ultimately decided who won the cash prize.

[93] On March 3, 2023, Donaldson asked fans on Twitter to "clean up the presentation" of Feastables displays on store shelves and suggested that they obscure competing products.

The brand, marketed as a healthier alternative to Lunchables, was founded as a joint venture with fellow YouTubers Olajide "KSI" Olatunji and Logan Paul.

[111] In March 2024, Donaldson and Amazon MGM Studios announced their plans to create a new reality competition series Beast Games, set to air exclusively on Prime Video.

[113][114] A spokesperson of Donaldson would blame external factors such as the global computer systems outage caused by CrowdStrike's update to its software, "extreme weather and other unexpected logistical and communications issues".

[83] Reporting by Insider showed that Turner previously posted a video in 2018 explaining his allegations and, in October 2019, released a deleted Twitter thread that stated that he was "yelled at, bullied, called mentally retarded and replaceable by Donaldson every single day".

[31] On June 17, 2023, Donaldson expressed wishes to shut down MrBeast Burger due to quality issues, saying he regrets signing "a bad deal" with Virtual Dining Concepts, LLC, but said the company "won't let me stop even though it's terrible for my brand".

[134] On November 1, 2024, the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan[133] concluded the allegations against Tyson were baseless after conducting "39 interviews of current and former employees" and reviewing "over 4.5 million documents from mobile phones, emails, Telegrams, Discords, WhatsApps and Slack".

[135][136][137] In a second video, DogPack404 interviewed another former employee, Jake Weddle, who described poor working conditions, including not being allowed to sleep, which caused him to develop insomnia.

[137] The employee also stated that Donaldson hired Jake Franklin's brother-in-law, nicknamed "Delaware", despite knowing he was a registered sex offender who had been charged with assaulting an 11-year-old child.

[138] DogPack404 also claimed that during the filming of one video, multiple women came forward with complaints about Donaldson's cameraman, who allegedly attempted to get them high on paint fumes and sexually assault them.

[137] In September 2024, a class action lawsuit on behalf of five former contestants of Beast Games was filed against Donaldson, Amazon, and associated production companies in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Notable YouTubers such as Rhett & Link, Marshmello, iJustine, Marques Brownlee, The Slow Mo Guys, Ninja, Simone Giertz, Jacksepticeye, and Smarter Every Day brought attention to the project, and the foundation began planting trees in October 2019 in U.S. national parks.

[145] The project received large donations from corporate executives Jack Dorsey, Susan Wojcicki, Elon Musk,[146] and Tobias Lütke,[147] as well as companies such as Discovery, Verizon, and PopCap.

Donaldson and Rober enlisted thousands of content creators, including AzzyLand, DanTDM, TommyInnit, LinusTechTips, TierZoo, LEMMiNO, The Infographics Show, Hannah Stocking, Dhar Mann, and Marques Brownlee.

[155] In the channel's first video, Donaldson announced the charity and food bank and named Darren Margolias, who appeared previously as an executive director.

[160] Donaldson describes himself as an introvert and admits struggling to maintain a social life due to his intense focus on YouTube and work ethic.

[60][172][32] The article stated that Donaldson, while still a teenager, had a habit of referring to people as "fags" on Twitter and regularly treated being homosexual as a punchline and "gay" as an insult.

[31][179][180] Donaldson also builds a parasocial relationship with his viewers by "looking directly at the camera and talking to the audience"[180] and displaying himself as "an exciting, relatable, authentic, down-to-earth person".

"[187] Fellow YouTuber and former NASA engineer Mark Rober wrote that Donaldson is "constantly raising the bar for creators whether it's through re-creating Squid Game in real life or paying for the eye surgeries of 1,000 blind people".