03-19-2026MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES

Tubi CEO Anjali Sud on how the streamer attracts younger viewers

Tubi is reimagining free, fan-focused TV, combining blockbusters and original content from social creators. Younger audiences are responding.

It’s one of the trickiest questions for any leader, especially in times of transformative change: when to follow the herd and when to go it alone.

Since taking the reins as CEO of Tubi in September 2023, Anjali Sud has been finding a unique path for the Fox-owned streamer.

The biggest streaming services in the world—Disney+, Netflix, Prime—battle for premium content and subscription dollars. Tubi, meanwhile, has gone all in on free, with its on-demand streaming app and library of more than 300,000 movies and shows. Tubi was the first streamer to add a TikTok FYP-style video scroll to its mobile interface to help users discover new shows by replicating the UX of the social media app that competes for their attention. (Netflix has since launched its own version.)

All of this aligns with the streamer’s strategy to target young people who have never had a cable subscription and prefer rabbit holes to broad buckets of content (an approach Sud has called “niche as core”). Tubi’s genre-spanning library includes everything from blockbusters like Jurassic World and originals like the young adult sports romance Sidelined: The QB and Me to content from a growing roster of social media creators including Jubilee, Kinigra Deon, and FunnyMike.

It’s working. While user growth seems to have slowed after exploding from 64 million in February 2023 to 97 million by the end of 2024 (Tubi now has more than 100 million users), profitability has arrived earlier than expected. Tubi generated $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2025 revenue and closed its second consecutive EBITDA-profitable quarter at the end of last year, powered by 19% year-over-year revenue growth and a 27% surge in user engagement.

I spoke to Sud about how she got here—and how she plans to maintain Tubi’s momentum in the face of ferocious competition.

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