2025 Creator Boom: Deal Report, Key Trends & Where the Money’s Flowing
As digital stars take audience and ad dollars, my half-year check-in reveals who's writing big checks, where investment & opportunity are and what’s coming

I write about the creator economy. I scooped a leaked Spotify dek revealing the company’s new assault on YouTube and reported on the creator coup at Cannes Lions, the writers’ civil war at Substack and the boom in microdramas. Reach me at natalie@theankler.com
When I first started writing Like & Subscribe, I had a hunch 2025 would be a transformative year for the creator economy. The industry, predicted by Goldman Sachs to hit $480 billion by 2027, had faced a bit of slowdown in recent years but surged to new relevance last fall amid the U.S. presidential election — or as it’s been dubbed, the “podcast election.” By winter, when Janice Min and I first hatched the plan for Like & Subscribe, MrBeast had premiered one of the most popular shows on Amazon’s Prime Video, and the creative team behind Hot Ones had proclaimed its independence from corporate ownership, signaling a new era for creator-first media businesses.
Six months later, I’m feeling pretty good about that hunch. Through the first half of 2025, funding for U.S.-based creator economy companies hit $1.6 billion, according to The Information’s Creator Economy Database. And though dealmaking slumped a little in the second quarter, there’s also been a lot of activity not captured by that database — things like Hollywood development deals, product launches and new efforts by major platforms to lock down top creators. “It really feels like we’re entering a new growth cycle for the creator space,” Chris Erwin, founder of creator economy M&A advisory RockWater, tells me. “We’ve seen a major uptick in deal flow.”
It’s a marked contrast to Hollywood, where everything feels sluggish — perhaps that’s why some of my most popular columns have focused on where to find the money and jobs that are still gettable. Here are the links if you haven’t already checked them out:
As the creator economy enters its third decade, everyone seems to have gotten a whole lot wiser about the power of online influence and how best to deploy it. Hollywood (for the most part) is no longer stunt casting creators into movies and TV shows and expecting their followers to, well, follow. And Erwin tells me that on the dealmaking side, investors have also gotten savvier after what he describes as the “irrational exuberance” of 2021 and 2022, when billions in capital flowed into the creator economy. Based on his conversations with CEOs, he tells me he’s seeing “a return to fundamentals focused on revenue growth, leaner business models and driving toward profit.” His caveat: “I think you will start to see some hype. I’m already starting to hear about some pretty crazy valuations out there.”
If, like me, you’ve spent much of this year consumed by news of wildfires, floods, wars and ICE raids, you’ve probably missed a headline or two about the moves of digital creators and the platforms where they operate. So let this serve as your mid-year guide to the state of the creator economy, including all the major deals and four key trends shaping the industry now — with links to my relevant coverage — and even a few predictions about what to expect as we close out the year.
In today’s column, I’ve got:
The biggest creator-led deals of 2025 in video and podcasting
Who made the big acquisitions and investments in creator representation and management and for how much
How legacy entertainment companies are backing creator-driven shows and films
Who’s launching the next unicorn ventures and brands, and which founders are making lucrative exits
The deals siphoning millions in ad dollars from legacy media as agencies “buy the future”
Two trends ahead that will rock YouTube and the entire creator economy
How YouTubers are redefining the “modern studio” model