Good morning. Starting this fall, Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson will be trapped in a room with three other celebrities as everyday people compete for cash.

But this time around, it’s not for his channel—it’s for ABC’s Shark Tank, where Donaldson and Beast Industries CEO Jeff Housenbold will serve as guest sharks. No remote island needed.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Netflix just announced a partnership with media companies like Condé Nast and Buzzfeed to bring more videos to the platform in August. The content will hit on a variety of genres like travel, cooking, and lifestyle including popular YouTube shows like Vanity Fair’s Lie Detector and Architectural Digest’s Walking Tour. The videos will range from 3–20 minutes.

A quick recap:

Looking ahead: “The next step could be opening up to UGC just like YouTube,” Colin and Samir said on X. 

Art creators Vexx and Gawx recently wrapped Creator Odyssey: World Stage, a branded video series with Lenovo that’s been renewed twice—and gotten bigger each time. Here’s why it worked and why Lenovo kept coming back →

How it started: Two years ago, production company Portal A approached Vexx and Gawx with a brief: each make a video with original artwork enabled by Lenovo devices. Their videos drove a combined 3 million views, with comments like, “I'm not going to do anything for the rest of the day other than sit and think about how amazing this whole project was.”

How it grew →

"When it became clear that Creator Odyssey was not just a campaign, but a platform to come back to over and over again, that was a real motivator," Portal A co-founder Zach Blume told us.

By the third series, Vexx and Gawx were co-designing the creative challenge, selecting an ensemble of creators from five countries, and hosting a live showcase in Mexico City to tie into Lenovo’s partnership with FIFA for the World Cup. Average viewership doubled from the second to the third series.

"It's like a Netflix series—season three, four, five. It's very smart for them to build that,” Gawx told us. 

Zoom out: At Cannes Lions this year, a major theme was brands changing the way they work with creators—moving away from ad units toward episodic entertainment built to compound over time. Creator Odyssey is one of the cleaner proof points that the model works: start with a strong creative concept, let the results speak, and give creators more ownership as the partnership deepens.

Sponsored by Shopify

Shopify just dropped new updates that take the busy work of running a product business off of your plate. Here’s what’s new: 

The bottom line: these updates mean your store now takes care of itself, so you can take care of making great stuff. Check out the rest of the updates.

Creator economy mergers and acquisitions are up 23% YoY, according to a new study from Quartermast Advisors. So far, 70 deals have been struck in H1 2026 (compared to 87 total deals in 2025).

The most highly sought after sales? Media properties, which make up 27% of the M&As. 

Context: Traditional media brands like Vox and Buzzfeed have dropped in value. Once valued at over $1B, the companies were acquired this summer for $300M and $120M respectively.

While these aren’t creator-led companies, these media brands work closely with creators. Quartermast Advisors founder James Creech said these purchases “expand the buyer universe” for creator companies. 

“Strategic acquirers are increasingly buying audience relationships they can't build organically and combining them with infrastructure they already own,” Creech told us via email. “That reinforces the idea that a trusted, first-party audience is itself a strategic asset.”

Other top buys include Accenture Song’s acquisition of the agency arm of creator talent company Whalar for an estimated $500M, and OpenAI’s purchase of TBPN.