Not only has Kai Cenat, a 21-year-old live streamer, YouTuber, and rapper, achieved mega social media popularity, but he’s also financially successful. With an estimated net worth of $9 million, he now can afford things he said he never dreamed possible. And he recently recalled his most gratifying purchase — a house for his mom.
He captured the moment in 2022 on his YouTube channel, where he has nearly 4 million subscribers.
He tells his cab driver on the way to visit his childhood home in the Bronx, “Today’s a big day for me…today a big day. I’m buying my mama a house.”
He later talks with the real estate agent about the process of buying the home while at the new property with family, admitting, “When buying a house, I didn’t know where to start,” Cenat said, but added that he has plans to buy other homes. “[This is] definitely one of many of many houses..the first of many houses, so we get [as] an investment property.” While he didn’t say where his mother’s new home was, he did indicate it was not “in the Bronx.”
Mother’s Day
“When I bought my mom a house, it was like her house, the cars that she wanted, it was like, ‘Wow,'” Cenat told host Speedy Morman in early July. “Like my mom could call me with anything that she needs, and I’m able to provide it. It’s insane, so I pray every day, and I’m just thankful.”
Social Media Mogul
Cenat has been able to build a strong platform and community on Twitch, one in which his subscribers each pay $5 monthly. After just two years on the live-streaming company, he reportedly became the first Black Twitch streamer to rake in 200,000 subscribers and only the third streamer overall to do so. In March, he broke another record by reaching 300,000 subscribers, BBC reported.
While he doesn’t disclose the exact revenue split with the platform, he said he also earns money from sponsored posts and other endorsement deals, Afrotech reported.
“When it comes to money stuff, I don’t like talking about it,” he said. “But with Twitch, it’s like, with a subscriber — with a sub — it’s originally, it’s 50/50. People in the Twitch space have different splits. I’m not gon’ say mine, but people have different splits, and that’s how it is. A lot of the other money comes from ad watching and all that other stuff.”
The Art of Gift Giving
Besides gifting his mother her house, Cenat went viral for giving $20,000 in cash to Aunt Cathy, a person he met during a summer camp in Boston as a child. Aunt Cathy became sort of a mentor to him and even purchased his first laptop, which he used to start editing videos.
After not seeing her since 2018, Cenat paid a visit to her in June — and, of course, it was all caught on video.
“Literally every time I came here, it was amazing,” Cenat told Aunt Cathy. “Also, you’re like a second mother to me. You literally got me everything I wanted that my mom sometimes couldn’t afford, from the [Nintendo] DS to the games to me being in Gamestop. It meant a lot.”
“The amount of things you’ve done for me, I can’t even pay it back,” he said.
“I got no words,” Aunt Cathy expressed.
She added, “Meeting you was just very sweet. It was fun having you up here every year and showing you some things that you didn’t see in the city. It was a two-way street.”
