YouTube Ownership Lens

About

Know who really owns your favorite YouTubers.

Private equity firms, hedge funds, and media conglomerates have quietly acquired hundreds of channels that feel “independent.” Ownership Lens surfaces that ownership right below the video you’re watching — color-coded from green (independent) to red (fully corporate-owned). Before the pre-roll finishes, you already know whether you’re watching a creator or a portfolio asset.

▸ HOW IT WORKS
When you land on a YouTube watch page, the extension reads the uploading channel’s name and handle, matches it against a public ownership database of 150+ verified deals, and renders a small banner below the video. Click to expand for the full record: owner, deal year, deal value, country, and a short source note.

▸ THE OWNERSHIP SCALE
• Independent (green) — no PE investment, no licensing deal, no media parent
• Revenue Share — firm takes a cut of ad revenue without equity or IP
• Library Licensed — investor bought rights to back-catalog videos only (e.g. Spotter-style deals)
• MCN Managed — multi-channel network handles monetization; creator still owns the channel
• Minority Equity — investor holds a stake; creator retains control of the channel
• Corporate Media — owned by a traditional media or corporate entity
• Majority Equity — investor owns a controlling stake (50%+)
• Full Acquisition (red) — investor fully owns the channel, brand, and IP

▸ EXAMPLES ALREADY IN THE DATABASE
Cocomelon (Moonbug / Blackstone), Veritasium (Electrify Video Partners), Game Theory (Lunar X), Donut Media (Recurrent / Blackstone), Hot Ones (Soros / Mythical consortium), MrBeast (Spotter + Beast Industries), Diary of a CEO (Flight Story + KKR partners), Vice (Fortress), Peppa Pig (Hasbro), Tasty (BuzzFeed), Trap Nation (Create Music Group), and 140+ more. Independents too — Linus Tech Tips, MKBHD, Kurzgesagt, Mark Rober, Good Mythical Morning — so you can also verify when a channel is still creator-owned.

▸ PRIVACY, BY DESIGN
Ownership Lens is built so it doesn’t need to know anything about you:
• No analytics. No telemetry. No tracking. No identifiers.
• No reading of your history, tabs, cookies, form inputs, or downloads.
• No collection of which YouTube videos or channels you view. Matching is 100% local.
• The only network request is a periodic fetch of the public ownership database. That request carries no cookies or user data — it’s the same request every installed extension makes.
Full privacy policy: https://ownership-lens.netlify.app/privacy.html

▸ DATA TRANSPARENCY
Every record is compiled from public sources: SEC filings, press releases, Bloomberg, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Tubefilter, Kidscreen. Deal values in USD unless stated. The database updates every few weeks; corrections are welcome and processed within a few days.

Found something wrong? Use the Report button inside the banner, or the Support page.

▸ FREE, OPEN, INDEPENDENT
Zero ads. Zero affiliate links. No data collection. Optional Ko-fi donations are the only funding model, and the extension runs the same whether you donate or not.

Ownership Lens is an independent research and transparency tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced by YouTube, Google, or any channel listed. Labels summarize publicly reported transactions and are not legal judgments or investment advice.