Meet World’s Biggest Twitch Streamers

M
y For You Page is coming to life. I’m in the back of the content creator collective AMP’s official RV, shuttling through the outskirts of Atlanta on our way to the studio. Like in the clips that inundate my feeds, each member brings a specific vibe: Duke Dennis possesses the confident energy — the “aura” — of the kid in high school who was simply good at everything. ImDavisss is the class clown, randomly interjecting by yelling “Swamp Izzo” in the same frenetic cadence as the DJ does throughout Playboi Carti’s latest album. Chrisnxtdoor and Agent 00 are low-key, probably the quietest of the bunch, and opt to hang around in the back of the van to get a quick nap. Fanum is like the extroverted friend who keeps the group together, though he isn’t on the bus with us, his presence is felt. 

Then there’s Kai Cenat. As the biggest streamer in the crew — often the biggest streamer on Twitch, period — he has the magnetic presence of a celebrity. He’s holding court with the other members of the group, showing them clips from his stream at Rolling Loud the night before. There’s an easy, brotherly chemistry between each of them, a cross between a sports team and a boy band. They talk about shoes — Duke has what Cenat describes as a “calm” way of styling his Louis Vuitton Timberlands. But Cenat has notes. “I really like how Chris dresses,” he says, pointing out his friend’s Balenciaga sneakers. “I just don’t like how Chris don’t take pictures to show it.”

AMP, which stands for “Any Means Possible,” was founded around 2019 by ImDavisss, Duke Dennis, Fanum, and Agent, who emerged making content in online communities centered around the NBA 2K franchise. The creators were scattered in cities throughout the U.S. and Canada. Agent initially pitched the group on the idea of a content house in Los Angeles, where creator collectives like Sway House were taking off, but relocating there fell apart, and they decided to move to Atlanta. “We deadass spent the first three years just pumping out what we consider great content, and we kept elevating,” Agent says. 

Today, AMP has more than 7 million YouTube subscribers on their main page, and millions more across platforms like TikTok and Twitch, where they’ve each become among the top streamers in the world. AMP’s YouTube channel is like a cable network, and they each serve as recurring characters in a larger universe. It features segments where they showcase their car collections, go on blind dates, and even play “MMA Basketball,” a hybrid sport they made up themselves. Basically, Spike TV for the TikTok generation. 

As YouTube and live streaming gained popularity during the Covid-19 lockdowns, the members of AMP became more prolific on Twitch. Fanum recruited Kai to the group around 2021 after showing the other guys his YouTube videos. “At first, I told Fanum I didn’t want to,” Cenat recalls. “Their chemistry was so good. I said, ‘I don’t want to ruin it.’” At the time, Cenat was a rising creator on YouTube, gaining popularity with his New York-centric vlogs and larger-than-life personality. Kai, along with the other members of AMP, have appeared at events like the Super Bowl and the NBA All-Star game, where they offered in-game commentary and participated in this year’s Celebrity Game. Recently, Cenat even streamed from the gilded halls of the Met Gala afterparty, where he chummed around with everyone from Pharrell to Pusha T to PinkPantheress. He even chats with Mattel’s team behind Barbie (“I’m gonna need about 10,000 LeBron dolls”), and chops it up with Jacob Arabo, the founder of Jacob & Co., whom he asked for a watch (Arabo declined). 

The members of AMP now have a global reach, too. Cenat, Fanum, and Agent have streamed from different parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America; when we meet, Dennis is preparing to visit China to stream. “We all pretty much get to go on our own side quests,” Dennis says. “He might be in Japan, and he might be in… Lord knows where.” Those international streams have gone on to bolster AMP’s audience. “That’s the fire part about traveling. You go there and it’s not just your audience there, people discover you because you’re there too,” Agent says. “Some of these countries, they don’t often see people pull up.”

The RV feels like traveling on a school bus with a group of teenagers. Cenat gushes about clips from Rolling Loud, where he joined Playboi Carti, the patron saint of young men in 2025, on stage as he debuted his long-awaited new album. He got so carried away that he even threw his $300 Supreme hoodie into the crowd. “Chat, I don’t know what it was,” he tells his stream later that night. “When I got on that stage … it’s something different. I turned into a fuckin’ rock star.” 

CONTENT CREATORS LIKE AMP are a harbinger for a future in which I, the lowly magazine writer, am obsolete. The streaming world is part of a broader shift in audience habits, oriented more towards not only video but live video. This realization arrived as my Uber pulled up to the house, a sprawling mansion that sits atop a hill with a view of Kennesaw Mountain. Before the thought could even metabolize, though, a more urgent one: Perhaps I’ll be invited on stream. Maybe I, too, can join in the revelry of the future. Maybe it isn’t too late. 

That seems to be the feeling around the entertainment industry as well. It’s why brands are eager to collaborate with them and why, in AMP’s case, they launched their men’s skincare line Tone earlier this year, offering staples like lotions and deodorant for young, hygiene-conscious men. It’s part of the larger content creator to entrepreneur pipeline we’ve seen with other popular figures like MrBeast and Jake Paul. “It doesn’t even matter what you do, you have to make content so you can sell the thing nowadays,” Agent says. “If you’re selling something and you’re not on TikTok, YouTube, then you’re not really doing a good job selling that thing.”

It’s noon, and the AMP house is abuzz with activity. About a dozen people work at the mansion to keep things running smoothly. Today is a rare occasion when all six members are supposed to be in one place, and their Chief Operating Officer, Hoss Sooudi, is keen on making the most of the time. On the schedule is shooting an AMP spoof of Storage Wars, as well as AMP Jeopardy. Before we can get to that, however, everyone’s got to show up. It’s still Ramadan, and Agent, a practicing Muslim, is fasting. He gets out of bed around noon and surveys the landscape. He’s the only one on time and quickly reverses course. Cenat flew back from L.A. on a private jet (his first), but hadn’t arrived at the house yet. As luck would have it, Fanum’s stuck in New York — he missed his flight to Atlanta — but they pull in a cardboard cutout of him from a skit they filmed called “Dress to Impress.” “It looks good, right?” Fanum says later. 

The team has just remodeled the common areas of the house with the help of Bang Energy, with whom they released an exclusive energy drink flavor, Any Means Orange. This, after an epic indoor fireworks battle — among other shenanigans — had the place looking like a warzone in videos. Now, $180 Loewe candles and vintage game consoles sit among design-centric coffee table books and throw pillows, lending the space a sense of quiet luxury. A mural in the style of a Renaissance painting, featuring each member of the group looking rather majestic, is painted on the ceiling. “It’s so wavy. The first thing you see when you walk in the house,” Davis says. 

“Now, in the mural, I don’t know why I’m holding a white woman,” Chris adds with a laugh.

Even with the new amenities, mischief courses through the air with AMP, and you get the sense that things would stay pristine for only so long. “I don’t think it’s going to stop it from getting rowdy,” Dennis says. 

Cenat interrupts, assuring me that they’ve “retired” the indoor fireworks. But that only lasts so long. 

EVERYONE IS DISAPPOINTED THAT Fanum couldn’t make it. As the most outgoing member in the crew, they describe him as the “glue.” Still, even the more low-key members of AMP have qualities that they bring to the table. Chrisnxtdoor was the crew’s videographer before stepping in front of the camera. “I was a late bloomer of content compared to you guys,” he says. “I was more just behind the camera.” That started to change once he got into making beats using FL Studio software live on streams. In fact, it was Chris who gave the now ascendant music-focused streamer Plaqueboymax his start by having him engineer a song live on stream. “He was helping me make bangers,” Chris says. “He was doing his thing and did it from there.”

One of the reasons beatmaking on stream has gained popularity is the inherently interactive nature of platforms like Twitch. Fans are able to offer input on a song as it’s being made. This, of course, might drive certain producers crazy, but for the general public, it’s an unprecedented look into the creative process. One of the hallmarks of Twitch streams is a callout to the “Chat,” referring to the thousands of comments coming in live. The chat is a living organism, the centerpiece of a good streamer’s channel. The ability to harness that kind of attention isn’t typical of the relationship between audience and traditional entertainer. It’s also not for the weak. Even the most loving communities come with trolls, and you have to learn to let it roll off of you.

“It builds up. So it’s like when you start, you start with a certain amount [of] viewers and, as you just keep getting bigger, you get used to it,” Cenat says. “And it’s not like you’re just reading everything that’s going by. It’s the chat; you can pin it, the chat stops and then goes again. So I just catch it when it stops.”

Streaming comes with other challenges, too. Cenat points to the myriad issues that plague him when he’s back in his hometown of New York City. There was, of course, the massive crowd in Union Square a few summers ago that took the city and police by surprise after Cenat announced a giveaway. (He was charged with inciting a riot; the charges were dropped last year after he apologized and paid a fine.) But even more recently, fans have been able to find out where they were staying in the city, drawing enough people to disrupt regular activities. At one point last summer, when they were between locations, Cenat had to stream out of a U-Haul. 

The setback didn’t stop the show, of course. Ice Spice famously joined him for one of his U-Haul streams, and Cenat has hosted a number of other notable guests, including Kevin Hart, who is now a regular on his streams. It’s part of what seems like a budding Hollywood crossover for Cenat and the rest of AMP. “I ain’t going to lie. I think I want to act and direct my own shows and more movies,” Cenat says, seated on the couch at the center of the house. Duke concurs, though his aspirations seem more specific. “I want to be in a Law and Order episode,” he says. “One episode, even if I’m just a dead body or something. I’m cool. That’s my peak.”

Agent can’t believe it: “Peak as a dead body?” 

Later, Fanum recalls joining Cenat’s stream with wrestler John Cena, where Cenat asked Cena to give a motivational speech, and Fanum and Cena effectively improvised a whole segment on the spot. “He just saying so much cool shit, but it made sense though, you know what I’m saying?”

Fanum says it’s those types of moments that make for a good stream. Beyond having any special guests or celebrities, it’s about connecting to something fans can feel in real time. “Emotion always goes into a good stream,” he says. “You could literally just sit down and talk for hours, and it can still be a good stream. If you can invoke emotion in your stream, that’ll move mountains.”

A few weeks after my visit, despite Cenat’s assurances, a fireworks war breaks out in the AMP house, although it remains confined to their individual bedrooms. On TikTok and Instagram Reels, clips circulate of AMP members looking shocked as their respective rooms filled with the smoke and carnage of different explosives being let off inside. Snippets from these streams are often uploaded with captions like “Kai starts to get emotional when there’s another amp war,” followed by a string of laughing and crying emojis. 

I ask Fanum whether or not things ever get too real on stream when they’re filming these stunts. “If it gets personal, it gets resolved, ’cause we the bros and the bros always going to resolve it,” he says. “For me, if you can’t resolve it with somebody, it’s not really your bro. So there’s nothing to worry about there. But yeah, if it didn’t ever get personal, then I feel like it’s fake. It’s got to be personal. That’s how you get to a stronger fanbase, by being personal.”