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It’s Wednesday and here’s a headline you probably didn’t expect to see in 2025: Napster—aka the definitive music-sharing platform of the early ‘00s—just sold for $207M.

Today’s News

BEAST MODE

With a Feastables/Beast Games linkup, MrBeast is making his brands more synergistic

The sweepstakes: MrBeast—aka Jimmy Donaldson—is building a bridge between two of his off-YouTube ventures. According to the official homepage for a new contest, buyers of Donaldson’s Feastables treats can enter for a chance to compete on Beast Games by uploading a photo of their receipt. Each unit purchased is good for one entry into the contest—except for Feastables’ new peanut butter cups, which are good for two entries per purchase. As of now, 50 contestant spots on the Amazon Prime Video original are up for grabs.

The context: The application of Feastables’ marketing power to Beast Games is more than just a fun publicity stunt to entertain fans—it’s also a sign of the increasing synergy among Donaldson’s expanding business interests. Feastables has been a crucial part of the MrBeast empire since its introduction in 2022, when the brand’s launch was tied into a video through a contest that rewarded buyers who found Willy Wonka-style golden tickets.

Videos like those are still a big part of Donaldson’s synergistic empire. In fact, Feastables peanut butter cups were introduced in a video that took MrBeast and his friends to some of the most dangerous locations on the planet. But while high-stakes videos pull in hundreds of millions of weekly views on the main MrBeast YouTube channel, their high production value makes them more financially unwieldy than a retail brand like Feastables.

To maintain the sustainability of his empire, Donaldson is putting more emphasis on ventures that don’t require multi-million-dollar cash prizes. In addition to forming complimentary connections between his brands, that strategy includes a planned investment that would value Beast Industries at $5 billion.

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• A new report from Nielsen suggests that seniors are watching twice as much YouTube on TVs as they were a year ago. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• Instagram announced yesterday that it will be “partnering directly with schools and teachers” as part of a new program designed to crack down on bullying and “help educators report potential teen safety issues.” (Meta)
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• TikTok exec Khartoon Weiss is reportedly moving up the ranks to become the platform’s new North America head of sales, a role vacated by Samir Singh last month. (AdWeek)
  
  

• Block—aka the fintech company co-founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey—laid off over 900 employees this week in a round of cuts affecting roughly 8% of its workforce. (TechCrunch)

TALKING POLITICS

Influencers are winning elections. A progressive TikToker wants to be next.

The creator: 26-year-old Kat Abughazaleh’s political takes and parodies of the American right have brought more than 200,000 followers to her TikTok account. Now, the creator hopes to leverage her social media presence to unseat 80-year-old Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (who represents Illinois’ ninth congressional district) in a Democratic primary.

Securing that win won’t be easy. Shakowsky has been a member of Congress for more than two decades, while Abughazaleh is a relative newcomer to Illinois (having grown up in Texas), and plans to forgo corporate donations.

Even so, Abughazaleh’s online presence gives her an edge among TikTok’s left-leaning community, which includes voters who feel ignored by mainstream politicians. That outsider spirit has already propelled some creators into political offices outside of the U.S. Prankster Fidias Panayiotou, for instance, was elected as a Member of Parliament in Cyprus last year.

Creators haven’t had quite as much luck securing electoral wins in the U.S.—at least, not yet. But American politicians have increasingly begun spreading their messages by becoming TikTokers, with democratic socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani serving as a notable example of the trend. If U.S. politicians can get on TikTok, why can’t a TikToker become a U.S. politician?

The context: The government, at least, seems to think that scenario is a very real (if undesirable) possibility. In fact, TikTok’s potential to upend traditional political narratives is one reason why the establishment is so afraid of it. Consider, for example, that Mark Warner—one of the architects of the U.S. TikTok ban—admitted that the law was only passed to smother the alleged anti-Semitism that accompanied critiques of Israel’s war in Gaza.

If Abughazaleh can parlay her online momentum into a Congressional seat, it will be a sign that TikTok has truly become a fierce political force. 

THE BIZ

No, Ashton Hall isn’t sponsored by Saratoga Water (but he might be soon)

The creator: Ashton Hall’s morning routine is all over X right now. A recent video of the fitness influencer’s process includes plenty of eye-catching moments (including one in which he rubs a banana peel on his face). But perhaps most noticeable are the blue glass bottles he carries everywhere.

Those bottles are the signature of New York-based company Saratoga Spring Water Co. Hall (who has 8.5 million followers on Instagram, 4.8M on TikTok, and 2.9M on YouTube) uses Saratoga for everything from drinking to face-dunking and always turns the label toward the camera.

The brand: Hall constantly posts videos of his various routines and health regimens. One such upload ended up on X thanks to user @tipsformenx. It now has over 740 million views. Some of the nearly three-quarters billion people who watched Hall’s content on X assumed he was an official partner of the bottled water brand. In reality, Saratoga’s parent company, Primo Brands, says it’s never paid him to market its water—but that could change soon.

Primo Brands confirmed to Business Insider that it’s reached out to Hall about a brand deal. The move makes sense: the company said its Instagram following grew by 10% over the weekend since Hall’s video on X went viral and “Saratoga” was also the #7 trending topic on the platform.

The brand’s stock price has also jumped. According to MarketWatch, a temporary 16.2% surge in premarket trading was directly attributable to Hall’s virality. (That’s an increase in market cap for the company of $1.76 billion!) Trading eventually settled down to a 2% increase in Monday’s stock price. It all comes at a time of significant growth for Saratoga, too. As MarketWatch points out, Primo already describes the brand—which retails for around $38 per 24-pack on Amazon—as one of its “rapidly growing premium products.”

For context, Saratoga sold $13 million worth of product in 2021 (the year Primo Brands bought it). By 2024, it was selling $71 million annually. Now, we’ll see if Saratoga can further that growth by turning a viral moment into long-term momentum.

WATCH THIS 📺

OpenAI is bringing image generation to ChatGPT

The chatbot: If you’ve had a conversation with ChatGPT lately, you’ll know it can provide long-winded explanations of scientific concepts, give questionable advice, and edit those papers you should have finished ages ago.

The update: But until yesterday, there was one major thing the bot couldn’t do: create images. In a Tuesday livestream, OpenAI execs and staff members Sam Altman, Gabriel Goh, Prafulla Dhariwal, Lu Liu, Allan Jabri, and Mengchao Zhong announced that ChatGPT will now be able to leverage its GPT-4o model to natively generate images and edit photos.

Check out the full stream here for details.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.