Podcast character and entrepreneur Steven Bartlett right this moment introduced his firm Steven.com has closed a serious eight-figure funding, at a €365 million valuation to construct what he calls the “Disney of the creator economic system” and take his rising media empire to a worldwide stage.
The funding was led by traders Gradual Ventures and Apeiron Funding Group. That is believed to be Europe’s largest ever creator holding firm fundraising spherical.
Bartlett, who can be the creator and host of Diary Of A CEO (DOAC), stated: “By bringing collectively creator IP, capital and our infrastructure, Steven.com is positioning itself to steer within the subsequent period of the creator economic system. My final ambition is to construct the Disney of the creator economic system – and the strategic companions this funding spherical has introduced on board has enabled me to take a giant step in that path.”
The funding spherical for Steven.com represents an distinctive scale in contrast with different European creator-economy and media-infrastructure fundings reported by EU-Startups in 2025.
Whereas latest bulletins reminiscent of Wyrld (Germany) (€1 million pre-Seed for creator-led e-commerce), Assisterr (UK) (€2.4 million for no-code AI-agent creation), Paid (UK) (€10 million to energy the AI-agent economic system) and Digital camera Intelligence (UK) (€1.7 million for AI-enabled creator {hardware}) deal with early-stage innovation, Bartlett’s eight-figure elevate at a €365 million valuation indicators a transfer towards consolidation and scale.
In distinction to those smaller rounds, Steven.com’s funding highlights the emergence of extra mature, vertically built-in creator-media firms in Europe, notably within the UK – positioning it as a possible anchor agency within the continent’s evolving creator-economy panorama.
“For the final century, firms like Disney – from its start line with Walt Disney himself – has demonstrated the ability of a single piece of mental property. He and his successors constructed a worldwide empire by taking a personality like Mickey Mouse and constructing a universe round him: movies, theme parks, merchandise and extra. This created a flywheel of immense, compounding worth which resulted in a generational firm.
“With my crew, I believe we’re constructing the trendy model of this mannequin. However in our world, the IP will not be a fictional character. The creator is the brand new franchise. Our mission is to construct the defining firm of the creator economic system by setting up an ecosystem that scales a creator’s affect throughout two core pillars: creator media and creator ventures, whereas powering this flywheel with our proprietary creator expertise,” added Bartlett.
EU-Startups has featured Steven Bartlett and his ventures a number of instances over latest years. In January 2023, we reported on the launch of his $100 million Flight Story Fund to help European startups. Later, in March 2023, Bartlett and his fund have been referenced as traders in London-based healthtech ZOE. His identify appeared once more in November 2024 in an article profiling his former enterprise associate’s new advertising and marketing startup, cocreatd.
In 2025, Bartlett’s affect within the creator-economy house was acknowledged twice extra: first in January 2025, the place his Diary of a CEO channel was listed among the many “25 must-follow YouTube channels for startups and entrepreneurs,” and later in June 2025, which included him in a roundup of main enterprise voices on TikTok.
Megan Lightcap, Companion at Gradual Ventures stated: “At Gradual Ventures, we’ve lengthy believed that creators are the subsequent nice entrepreneurs – and Steven Bartlett is a first-rate instance. He isn’t simply one of many fastest-growing and most trusted voices on the earth; he’s a meticulously data-driven entrepreneur whose content material, deep group, and portfolio of firms create a robust flywheel that fuels system-wide progress. We couldn’t be extra excited to again him via the Gradual Creator Fund as he scales Steven.com throughout media, merchandise, and expertise.”
This new funding will speed up Bartlett’s mission to empower creator media firms and creator ventures to scale globally and develop world-class creator IP and creator commerce eco-systems. The funding additionally permits Bartlett and his firm – incorporating established divisions FlightStory, FlightCast and FlightFund – to keep up full independence, with Bartlett holding majority possession of greater than 90%.
Christian Angermayer – Apeiron Funding Group – stated: “I have identified Steven for a number of years now, and he is without doubt one of the brightest visionary entrepreneurs I’ve ever labored with – a real and uncommon asset to British entrepreneurship. Him and his world class administration crew are constructing the infrastructure to rework particular person creators into institutional-grade companies via an built-in ecosystem of media, ventures, and expertise.
“We are backing the corporate that can outline the creator economic system by proving that the person, correctly capitalised and supported, can construct empires that rival the leisure conglomerates of the final century. Europe must take the creator economic system very severely and we want extra platforms like Steven.com to construct their empires proper right here in Europe.“
With the creator economic system projected to succeed in greater than $528 billion by 2030 and greater than 207 million lively creators worldwide, Steven.com is positioned to harness this momentum by combining funding, media experience and expertise infrastructure below one roof.
Bartlett already works with outstanding creator expertise via his media division, FlightStory. This consists of Trevor Noah, Davina McCall, and Paul C. Brunson. The corporate acquires, scales and builds business infrastructure round high creator media IP, while investing in and incubating creator ventures.
Bartlett has additionally constructed a collection of public and proprietary instruments that use creator viewers knowledge to take away guesswork from technique and progress choices on creator IP. Earlier this month he introduced the general public launch of 1 such device referred to as FlightCast.com – the world’s first podcast internet hosting platform constructed for video, with in-built AI and testing capabilities.
DOAC – which he created and likewise presents via FlightStory – is now the world’s second largest interview podcast with greater than 13 million YouTube subscribers and 70 million month-to-month views/downloads. It had achieved multiple billion streams throughout all platforms by late 2024 and this month (Oct 2025) it surpassed one billion views on YouTube alone. It additionally stays the No1 Podcast within the UK and Europe and is at the moment including 600K new YouTube subscribers every month – making it the quickest rising present on the earth – with a 500% compound annual progress price.
Earlier friends embody Michelle Obama, MrBeast, Matthew McConaughey, Louis Tomlinson, Simon Cowell, Boris Johnson and, most just lately, former Liverpool FC supervisor Jurgen Klopp.
Bartlett has invested in additional than 40 firms, together with SpaceX, Whoop, Lovable, Replit, MrBeast, Cadence, Groq, and PerfectTed. This month PerfectTed additionally turned Dragon’s Den’s most profitable ever funding with the corporate now being valued at greater than $190 million lower than three years for the reason that Founders appeared on the TV collection.
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