The creator economy has led to a swell of new media companies, but few have access to capital to expand.
One of the companies trying to change that is CreatorFi, and it just raised $45 million in new financing to fund creator-led media businesses, Business Insider exclusively learned.
CreatorFi advances capital to creators against the revenue they earn from platforms like Roblox, Spotify, TikTok, and YouTube. It also offers traditional business loans.
CreatorFi’s cofounders said they saw an opportunity as technology makes it easier for people to build IP-based businesses without institutional backing.
“It used to take hundreds of millions of dollars to publish a game that will make a couple million dollars a month, and now, in Roblox, in Fortnite, kids are doing it in their basement,” said Billy Huang, CreatorFi’s CEO and cofounder.
CreatorFi raised a $12 million credit facility in 2025. The new financing is a combination of equity and debt. The equity financing was led by Escape Velocity (EV3) with Uncorrelated Ventures, Protagonist, and other investors participating, including executives from State Street, JPMorgan Chase, and Periscope. The debt financing was led by VerisFi Capital.
Creators have reached a point of maturity where their platform earnings can be systematically backed, and CreatorFi was attractive because of its data-driven approach to evaluating creators, said Salvador Gala, managing partner at Escape Velocity.
“It just shows a maturity in capital markets to acknowledge creators as businesses,” CreatorFi cofounder Jack Cameron said.
How CreatorFi works
CreatorFi backs creators of varying sizes, with a focus on gaming, music, digital content, and live events.
It writes checks that typically start at $500,000 and can go up to $5 million, in exchange for a percentage (usually 50%) of the creator’s platform revenue and the requirement that the creator make new IP, such as a number of new songs by a certain date. If CreatorFi thinks the company it’s backing has a high key-person risk, it might require the person to take out life insurance.
Those it’s backed include music label Coasthill IV; Mythical Games, a venture-backed company that developed the “FIFA Rivals” game with FIFA; and YouTubers Lah Mike and The Danza Project.
CreatorFi starts with how much a creator earns from a given platform, then looks at indicators of their fan engagement.
“We try to figure out what is the strength of the IP,” Huang said. “We really love creators that have a cult-like following. They don’t necessarily need to be big.”
The creator funding battle
A growing number of investors are battling to back creator-led companies.
There’s Spotter, which primarily works with YouTubers like MrBeast and Dude Perfect. In addition to traditional record companies, firms like beatBread and Sound Royalties advance money to artists.
There’s still a gap in funding for the early- to mid-stage companies that CreatorFi is backing, so more capital entering the space is good, said Andy Cloyd, a former venture capitalist and now CEO of Superfiliate, a creator marketing platform.
CreatorFi says it differs from Spotter by investing across multiple platforms. When it comes to music, CreatorFi sees itself as focused on an artist’s long-term commercial growth, advancing them money against their future earnings to create new IP. It doesn’t acquire catalog rights in exchange for payments.
Besides advancing money, it also promotes itself as having a big ecosystem that can benefit creators. When a musician it backed went on tour, for example, CreatorFi tapped other creators it had backed for promotion.
“We want to be able to vertically integrate and say, ‘Hey, not only can you do this with your copyright and your royalties, we can also extend you into the physical world and help promote you within our ecosystem,'” Huang said.
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