Jimmy Donaldson joins Shark Tank S18 on ABC today as a guest shark. Sitting beside him is Jeffrey Housenbold, CEO of Beast Industries, a company that received a $200 million investment in January.
Shark Tank S18 and the season’s guests
Season 18 starts today, 30 September 2026, on ABC. Donaldson and Housenbold join the panel as guests, together with Steven Bartlett, host of The Diary of a CEO, actress Mindy Kaling, former NFL player J.J. Watt and the founders of the fashion brand Favorite Daughter.
Bartlett’s presence next to Donaldson is not just casting. Both went from having an audience to having their own company. The Diary of a CEO has passed 19.5 million subscribers on YouTube. It will be the first time Donaldson publicly evaluates someone else’s business.
Beast Industries in numbers
According to Bitmine’s January announcement, Donaldson’s channels had a combined 450 million subscribers and more than five billion views a month. The figure has grown since then. The main channel alone now has more than 500 million subscribers and was the first on YouTube to pass that mark.
Feastables, a brand of cookies, bars and chocolates, is in US retail. Beast Philanthropy, the company’s non-profit arm, has given out more than twenty million free meals through the #TeamTrees, #TeamSeas and #TeamWater initiatives.
Donaldson stopped running the company alone when he brought in Housenbold, formerly CEO of Shutterfly and then managing partner at the SoftBank Vision Fund. Housenbold brought a growth-equity approach to management and a division of content, product and philanthropy into manageable units.
In January 2026, Bitmine Immersion Technologies announced a $200 million investment in Beast Industries. Bitmine is a US Ethereum treasury company traded on NYSE American under the ticker BMNR.
Tom Lee, Bitmine’s chairman, said at the time: "MrBeast and Beast Industries, in our view, is the leading content creator of our generation, with a reach and engagement unmatched with GenZ, GenAlpha and Millennials."
Housenbold commented on the deal as follows: "Their support is a strong validation of our vision, strategy, and growth trajectory and it provides additional capital to achieve our goal to become the most impactful entertainment brand in the world."
Content as a corporation
Shark Tank is a format for evaluating early-stage companies. Donaldson’s presence as the evaluator rather than the contestant moves the creator economy into a new role. The way companies with rights and distribution are emerging around creators points in the same direction.
Bitmine is investing not in a YouTuber’s fan base but in a group that already had 450 million subscribers in January, a consumer product in US retail and a non-profit activity with measurable output. The growth-equity investor’s approach, which used to be missing in the creator economy, now works as a standard tool.
For brand directors in European markets, both creator guests in season 18 are study material. Donaldson’s model, where content is the primary asset and consumer products are the output, and Bartlett’s model, where content is a platform and the company a media holding, are two routes that now attract institutional capital regardless of geography.
Shark Tank S18 premieres on 30 September 2026 on ABC.
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