Cars & Bids, a car auction site founded by Doug DeMuro, an automotive YouTuber who has amassed 4.5M+ subscribers since 2013, raised $37M from The Chernin Group
Doug DeMuro is arguably the most successful automotive YouTuber in the relatively short history of that young medium.
Context & Ripple Effects
Cars & Bids is the rare case of a creator building a business beyond the channel itself rather than selling it: Doug DeMuro turned his 4.5M-subscriber automotive audience into an auction marketplace, and The Chernin Group — which has also put $100M into Night Capital and taken a majority stake in Food52 — is now backing it with $37M. That puts institutional money behind a creator-owned company instead of behind the channel as content asset.
The contrast with recent coverage is sharp: investor-acquired car channels like Car Throttle and Donut have seen an exodus of on-camera talent, and Defy Media's collapse left creators from its 50+ channel portfolio still owed money. Meanwhile peers like MrBeast have followed the same playbook of branching out into businesses off the back of YouTube fame.
First-order effects
- DeMuro now has growth capital to scale Cars & Bids' auction marketplace beyond what ad revenue and channel income could fund, while The Chernin Group adds a transaction-based business to its consumer portfolio alongside Food52 and Night Capital.
Second-order effects
- Rival enthusiast-auction platforms face a competitor whose customer acquisition is subsidized by one of the largest automotive audiences on YouTube; the funding also pressures other top creators to formalize business ventures before investors pick their own favorites.
Third-order effects
- If creator-owned marketplaces keep attracting institutional checks while investor-owned channels bleed talent, the industry structure shifts toward creators holding equity in businesses that outlive their channels — with funds like The Chernin Group acting as the financing layer for that transition.
The trend: Creator economics are maturing from ad-revenue fame into equity-backed businesses, with investment firms like The Chernin Group funding creator-founded companies rather than acquiring channels outright.