Iman Gadzhi's Free Challenge Starts Today. The Number on the Registration Page Is $155 Million.

The first session goes live at 1 PM Eastern today. The biggest claim on the registration page isn't about AI at all. It's an aggregate: "Attendees from my previous events generated over $155M+."

That's the engine of the whole page. Everything else is scheduling.

The AI Income Challenge 2026 is built around a single promise — building a "$373/Day AI Side Hustle" in five days — and is framed as a celebration of Gadzhi's investment in Higgsfield AI. It runs live on November 7, 8, 9, 10 and 15 with Mark Tilbury as co-host. Session one, today, covers "The Best AI Income Stream to Start in 2026."

The format is the product

Free live sessions, a sequence of days, a paid offer at the end. Reviewer Moonlite Money, which tracked the event, describes the structure as a free challenge leading into a roughly $2,000 Monetise pitch, alongside the $373/day claims.

The same outlet notes the format keeps running under new names: a Make Money Online Challenge in May 2025, an AI Income Workshop in January 2026, and now the November 2026 AI Income Challenge with Tilbury.

This is the dominant launch architecture of the era. Thousands of smaller creators are copying it this quarter.

What Washington has on the table

On January 13, 2025, the FTC opened comment on proposed changes to the Business Opportunity Rule plus a new Earnings Claim Rule. The expansion would pull in "money-making opportunities" — business coaching and investment opportunities that claim to help consumers build a business or earn income.

The definition is wide. A business coaching opportunity would mean any program, plan or product represented as teaching someone how to establish or operate a business. The rule would be renamed the "Business and Money-Making Opportunity Rule."

The operational part: sellers would be barred from material misrepresentations and required to hold written substantiation for earnings claims, to be handed to consumers on request. Penalties could include consumer restitution and civil penalties. Reporting on the proposals has put the exposure at civil penalties up to $53,000 per violation, and the covered category is read to include online courses.

None of it is law yet. Two commissioners dissented when the proposals were announced, calling the move inconsistent with the incoming administration's approach to regulation. But it hasn't gone away: the FTC's regulatory agenda published in the Federal Register on August 14, 2026 still lists the Business Opportunity Rule and the proposed Earnings Claims rule.

The denominator problem

A cumulative total has no denominator. $155 million across how many attendees, over how many events, measured how?

That's precisely the gap the agency is aiming at. The FTC's position is that such claims mislead unless the seller can show the results are typical rather than best cases cherry-picked from a few clients.

FTC defense lawyers have been warning this crowd for years. Claims built on those who achieved exceptional or above-average results are described as a regulatory enforcement favorite. In its investigations, the FTC frequently finds that the vast majority of enrollees made no money, and that many lost money on top of what they paid.

One more line worth reading twice if you run affiliates: marketers who unlawfully lure consumers into training or coaching programs can expose the advertiser to liability where the advertiser knew or should have known.

Today the headline number is a marketing asset. Under the proposed rulebook, it becomes a file somebody can ask to see.