Whether you’re a Twitch user or not, if you are on social media, you’ve surely come across viral clips of Kai Cenat. Named one of Rolling Stone’s 20 most influential creators in 2023, the 22-year-old won the Streamer of the Year Award at the 2023 Streamer Awards, and also became the third streamer to ever reach 200,000 subscribers on Twitch, a live video streaming platform, making him the first Black streamer to reach this milestone.
He first began posting on YouTube in 2018, using his account mostly for sharing challenges and pranks, but he really blew up after he switched his streaming to Twitch in 2021. Since then, his viewership has skyrocketed, with him now having over 9 million followers across his YouTube and Twitch accounts. He has also had special guests feature on his lives, including Nicki Minaj, Drake, Ice Spice, 21 Savage and Offset. From humble beginnings, he credits “Aunt Cathy”, who gave him his first laptop and has been a second mother to him, as his launching pad.
Although his meteoric rise has come with some controversy, there’s no doubting his popularity and gargantuan cultural influence. In 2023, his promise to give away PlayStation 5 consoles at Manhattan’s Union Square Park resulted in thousands of people descending onto the area, forming a crowd that quickly became unruly.
During a stream on 8 February, 2024, Cenat announced his partnership with Nike, making history as the first streamer to partner with the company. The partnership represents an innovative marrying of two industries - fashion and digital - demonstrating the ubiquity and influence of digitization across sectors. Although the details of the deal are yet to be revealed, he did mention that the two have “something big” in the works for an in-real-life stream that would take place in Las Vegas.
