The next creator economy won’t be built around entertainment

Over the past decade, the creator economy has allowed writers, streamers, educators, and entertainers to build audiences and turn them into businesses. Platforms like YouTube, Substack, Patreon, and Twitch didn’t just help creators reach more people; they created entirely new business models centered on individuals rather than organizations.

Now this economy is entering a new phase. Earlier this year, MrBeast assembled a team to build AI-powered infrastructure for creators, rather than simply expanding his own media business. This signals that the creator economy is maturing. As creators become businesses, infrastructure becomes increasingly valuable.

AI will accelerate this evolution—not just by making existing creators more productive, but by enabling an entirely new wave of creators. This new generation won’t focus on capturing attention; they will build communities capable of solving complex real-world problems. For example, a doctor could lead a community to change healthcare policy, a journalist could organize a movement to defend press freedom, a scientist could mobilize support for evidence-based policies, or local residents could transform their neighborhood.

History shows that major advances—civil rights, universal education, environmental protection—came from communities organizing around a shared purpose. But building and sustaining such communities required significant time, skills, and resources. AI is rapidly lowering these barriers. Content creation is becoming easier, communication can be personalized at scale, and community management can be automated. Just as AI creates a new generation of solo entrepreneurs, it also creates a new generation of impact entrepreneurs.

These impact builders face common challenges: attracting members, communicating effectively, coordinating participation, building trust, and creating sustainable business models. Currently, they rely on a patchwork of tools: social media for amplification, messaging apps for coordination, spreadsheets for operations, and separate tools for payments, newsletters, and community management. This works for small communities but becomes difficult as they scale.

Investors should pay attention. The biggest software opportunities often emerge not from inventing new technology, but from the new behaviors technology enables. The internet created a new wave of merchants, smartphones created a new generation of developers, and AI is now birthing an era of impact builders. For perspective, reaching 1,000 subscribers on Substack takes an average of 425 days, but cause-driven communities may grow much faster because causes spread virally.

Francisco Polo, CEO and co-founder of MOVEMENTS, notes that the next European unicorn may come not from another AI model, but from the infrastructure that those models make possible. Companies building this infrastructure could become some of Europe’s most valuable startups.