In December 2025 Linus Sebastian did something almost no creator of his size has done: he said, on the record, how much YouTube had ever paid him. About
purchase from a computer store, it is the single most useful number ever published about a YouTube business, and it happens to prove that the calculator on this site overestimates him by half. This profile explains why, and everything else.
Fast facts
Real name: Linus Gabriel Sebastian, born August 20, 1986, in Ladner, British Columbia; raised on a hobby farm in Maple Ridge; named after the chemist Linus Pauling (Wikipedia)
Company: Linus Media Group, incorporated October 3, 2012 and launched from a garage in January 2013 by Sebastian and Yvonne Ho, its CFO and co-owner; about 120 employees in Surrey, BC, as of January 2026 (Wikipedia)
Channel:@LinusTechTips — 16.9M subscribers and 9,773,485,749 views on September 8, 2026, measured by our tracker (watch the live count); all LMG channels combined pass 32 million subscribers
Divisions: Creator Warehouse (LTTStore), Floatplane, LTT Labs, Whale LAN (LMG)
Role today: Chief Vision Officer since July 1, 2023; CEO is Terren Tong, formerly his supervisor at NCIX (TechSpot)
A channel bought for a dollar
Sebastian was a sales rep and product manager at NCIX, a Vancouver-area computer retailer, when he hosted the first NCIX Tech Tips video on July 24, 2007. Sixteen months later, on November 25, 2008, he started Linus Tech Tips as a rougher, lower-budget offshoot (Wikipedia). In October 2012 he negotiated to take the channel with him for one dollar, in exchange for a two-year non-compete, a commitment to build NCIX's in-house video team, and two years of hosting at what he has called bargain-basement rates. LMG launched from a garage in January 2013; by 2014 the channel sat in the top one percent of Google's preferred advertising channels.
The channel passed ten million subscribers around the start of 2020 and stands at 16.9M subscribers today, adding roughly 2,006,707 views a day over our last 9 days of measurements. What distinguishes it is volume and range: 25 long-form uploads in the last 30 days, 84 in the last 90, averaging 2,057,857 views each, plus a network of sister channels — Techquickie, TechLinked, ShortCircuit, GameLinked — and the weekly WAN Show, a livestream that doubles as the company's town hall.
The business, in the company's own numbers
The offer he declined. In May 2023, announcing he would step down as CEO, Sebastian disclosed that an unnamed company had offered roughly
The products. Product sales are now more than half of revenue. The LTT Screwdriver launched on August 27, 2022 after three years of development with the Vancouver toolmaker Megapro, sold out to backorder immediately, and sells today at $69.99 with nearly ten thousand store reviews; an LMG staffer told Prusa in 2025 it had “hundreds of thousands of customers.” The
49.99 backpack, the merchandise, and the water bottles run through Creator Warehouse, incorporated in 2018.
The other bets. Floatplane, a subscription video platform, incorporated in April 2017. LTT Labs, announced in November 2021 as “a division dedicated to testing the validity of manufacturer claims,” is the expensive one — Sebastian himself titled a 2023 update The haters were right… I'm wasting my money. Whale LAN is a LAN-party event. Personally, he disclosed a
25,000 investment in the laptop maker Framework in 2021.
Sponsorship. LMG's partner page claims more than 150 annual partners and a 60% sponsor return rate, built, in its words, on trust with both audience and partners.
Controversy timeline
March 23, 2023 — The main channel and TechLinked were hijacked to stream a cryptocurrency scam; YouTube briefly terminated the channel while it was recovered.
August 14, 2023 — GamersNexus published a 45-minute video, The Problem with Linus Tech Tips, alleging uncorrected testing errors and that a prototype water block lent by the small firm Billet Labs — tested on the wrong graphics card — had been sold at a charity auction without consent. Billet said no offer of payment arrived until two hours after the video went live, at which point Linus emailed directly; LMG reimbursed the prototype's cost.
May 22–23, 2024 — LMG published a summary of an investigation by the Vancouver employment-law firm Roper Greyell. LMG said the investigation found that claims of bullying and harassment were not substantiated and that allegations sexual harassment had been ignored were false, while recommending further training on raising concerns. LMG said it believed a defamation case “would be strong” but chose not to pursue one. The full report was not published; only LMG's summary exists, which is why every finding above is phrased as LMG's statement.
August–September 2024 — A De-Google Your Life video was removed by YouTube as harmful, with a 90-day warning; Sebastian acknowledged it had discussed accessing YouTube content without using YouTube.
January 2025 — After Sebastian called GamersNexus's lawsuit claims against PayPal's Honey disingenuous, GamersNexus published a response citing three older disputes, including a 2022 attribution complaint; an independent plagiarism analyst judged that one “a mountain out of a molehill.”
October 2025 – February 2026 — Two former staff members posted videos about their departures; Sebastian's public reply to the second, in February 2026, was a joke link rather than a statement, and no official LMG response was reported.
No court docket involving Linus Media Group appears in any source we could verify.
So what does he actually earn?
A rare chart: most of the bars are numbers the creator stated himself, and one of them shows our own method being wrong.
What Linus has said. About
6 million lifetime from AdSense as of December 2025; AdSense at roughly ten percent of company revenue, which implies lifetime revenue on the order of
60 million — our inference, not his statement; a peak of around 60 million monthly views earning “
to
.50” per thousand, or
20,000 to
50,000 a month from long-form; product sales above half of revenue; and a declined
00 million offer.
Where our method fails, and why that matters. Our Money Calculator would price 60 million monthly views in the Technology niche at a typical $8 CPM × 0.55, or about
64,000 a month — roughly double what Linus reports actually receiving. The gap is instructive: his stated RPM of
–2.50 is net of the views that carry no ads (ad blockers are common in a PC-enthusiast audience), of YouTube Premium, and of the fact that not every view is a monetized long-form impression. For this channel today, 25 uploads a month at 2,057,857 views is 51.4M monthly views; by our method that is
26,364 a month from ads, and by his own RPM closer to
15,754. We show both because the honest number is the one he gave.
The net-worth sites, and why they disagree.One says $60 million; another $85 million according to several unnamed sources; a third
6 million. None of them starts from the two hard facts in public view — that he and Ho own all of a company somebody offered
00 million for, and that ads are a tenth of its revenue. Our honest framing: the couple's stake in LMG is plausibly worth somewhere around the offer they declined, which puts their combined net worth in the tens of millions on paper — illiquid, undisclosed, and split between two people. Nobody outside their accounting knows more.
Recognition
Inc. Magazine ranked him fourth on its 2015 list of tech power players (Wikipedia); the channel was a Streamy nominee in the Technology category three years running, 2021 through 2023, without winning. In January 2026 he demonstrated a rollable laptop on The Tonight Show; it failed on air, the segment was cut from broadcast, and his own verdict was “I was full deer-in-headlights, guys. I was mortified.”
Lessons for creators
Ads are the funnel, not the business. Ten percent of revenue is the number to remember. The screwdriver and the backpack are why LMG employs 120 people.
Disclose, and you set the terms. Every net-worth site is guessing; Linus told the audience the real ad figure, and the guessers look worse for it.
Compiled from public sources linked above and from TubeScope's own tracker data on September 8, 2026. Where this article describes the 2024 investigation, it reports Linus Media Group's published summary; the full report is not public. All income and net-worth figures are estimates or the company's own statements and are labelled as such; nobody outside its accounting knows the real numbers. Corrections: support@tube-scope.com.
Frequently asked questions
What is Linus Tech Tips' net worth?
No verified figure exists; sites claim
6 million to $85 million. The two hard public facts are that Linus Sebastian and Yvonne Ho own all of Linus Media Group, and that an unnamed buyer offered about
00 million for it in 2023, which they declined. Their stake is plausibly worth somewhere around that offer — illiquid, undisclosed, and split between two people.
How much does Linus Tech Tips make from YouTube?
Linus said in December 2025 that the channel had earned about
6 million lifetime from YouTube ads, that ads are roughly ten percent of company revenue, and that at peak the long-form channel made about
20,000 to
50,000 a month at an RPM of
to
.50. Product sales are more than half of revenue.
Why did Linus step down as CEO?
In May 2023 he announced Terren Tong would become CEO on July 1, saying he was not built for the role and was exhausted. He became Chief Vision Officer and remains a co-owner with Yvonne Ho, the company's CFO.
What happened with Linus Tech Tips in August 2023?
GamersNexus published a video alleging testing errors and the unauthorised charity auction of a Billet Labs prototype; LMG reimbursed the cost, apologised, and paused production for about ten days. A former employee separately alleged a hostile workplace. LMG hired the law firm Roper Greyell, and in May 2024 said the investigation had not substantiated the bullying and harassment claims. The full report was not published.
How did Linus Tech Tips start?
As an offshoot of NCIX Tech Tips, the channel Linus hosted for the Vancouver-area retailer where he worked. He started Linus Tech Tips on November 25, 2008 and bought it from NCIX for one dollar in October 2012, launching Linus Media Group from a garage in January 2013.
