Zürcher Nachrichten - Iggy Azalea Invests in Shift - The AI Company Behind the Fastest-Growing Platform in the $1.3 Trillion Creator Economy, Fanvue

LONDON, UK / ACCESS Newswire / August 27, 2026 / Iggy Azalea, the four-time Grammy-nominated artist, entrepreneur, and active investor, has personally invested a substantial sum in Fanvue's parent company SHIFT - the AI infrastructure the platform runs on. As part of the investment deal, Azalea will also become the founding member of SHIFT's Creator Advisory Board.

The move comes at a time when the world's biggest creators, athletes and music artists are increasingly looking to multi-million-dollar equity opportunities in the creator economy - recent examples include MrBeast and the Paul brothers, Jake and Logan.

AI is transforming how people make money online. For two decades, the creator economy has run on a simple trade: creators build the audience, and advertisers rent it. That era is ending. Advertising isn't going away, but something else is the future: fans paying creators directly, for subscriptions, communities, experiences and digital products. Direct monetisation is the fastest-growing force in a creator economy projected to reach $1.3 trillion by 2033 (Grand View Research), and it hands creators what advertising never did: ownership of their income.

"I've spent my career watching the value creators generate flow everywhere except to the actual creators themselves," said Azalea. "Every now and then a Stripe or a Shopify comes along and changes who holds the leverage. I'm backing SHIFT to be that company for the creator economy. And I'm not just the face, I'm an owner."

SHIFT's flagship platform, Fanvue, surpassed a $200 million annualised run rate in July - five months earlier the business hit $100m, making it the fastest-growing platform in the creator economy. The platform is home to Cardi B, footballer Alisha Lehmann, WNBA star Kysre Gondrezick and football journalist Fabrizio Romano. The business closed a $22 million Series A in January led by Inner Circle, the investment club whose portfolio includes Revolut, Anthropic and xAI.

Fanvue was launched in 2020 by Joel Morris, Will Monange and Harry Fitzgerald. Morris, a teenage YouTube star with more than 2.5 million subscribers, saw the model from the inside: the audience was his, but the earnings ran through advertisers, not fans. Fanvue was built to flip that - and as it has scaled, the vision outgrew the platform alone and became SHIFT.

SHIFT was built to transform how the creator economy earns. At its centre is Fanvue, the AI-first platform where creators run their businesses; around it, SHIFT is building a growing ecosystem of apps that expands what creators can sell, payment rails built for a new era of AI-driven & agentic commerce, and financial services designed to scale creator earnings. Creators using SHIFT's AI tools earn between three and six times more than those who don't.

"AI is fundamentally changing how people make money online, and global talent like Iggy investing in SHIFT underlines the belief in our vision" said Joel Morris, Co-Founder and Co-CEO.

"For twenty years creators could only really sell one thing, their audience's attention, and advertisers were the only buyer. AI removes that ceiling," said Will Monange, Co-Founder and Co-CEO.

"Iggy shares the same vision as the SHIFT team - build the AI infrastructure that the whole creator economy will run on." said Harry Fitzgerald, Co-Founder & COO.

-ENDS-

About SHIFT: SHIFT is the AI infrastructure company for the creator economy, spanning the Fanvue platform, its AI engine, the first app store on any creator platform, and payment and financial rails. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in London.

About Fanvue: Fanvue is the fastest-growing platform in the creator economy, with 17+ million monthly active users and over 325,000+ creators

About Iggy Azalea: Four-time Grammy nominee, multi-platinum recording artist, and active entrepreneur and investor.

Contact information

Ryan Michael Gilks
[email protected]
07568490267

SOURCE: Shift Holdings Ltd

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire

O.Hofer--NZN