Rumble gets 22,000 Nvidia chips, but the video company's CEO insists this isn't a fad-like pivot

By Britney Nguyen

Is Rumble's AI expansion just Allbirds 2.0 - or a move modeled after Elon Musk?

Rumble is a video platform that serves as a smaller rival to YouTube.

In another sign of artificial-intelligence euphoria, Rumble, which is best known for being an alternative to YouTube, is exciting investors through its move to become more of an AI player.

The company announced Wednesday that it completed the purchase of cloud and AI infrastructure provider Northern Data. It's changing its name to RUM Group and will operate through two units, one focused on AI infrastructure and the other on video.

For its part, RUM (RUM) says the move isn't out of left field, as it already launched its cloud business to the public in 2024.

"We needed that infrastructure for our own current business and also felt we could have a real competitive advantage in the market by having that," CEO Chris Pavlovski said. With its own capacity, the company can reduce its reliance on a third-party cloud provider.

He also balked at comparisons to Allbirds (BIRD), which generated some investor hype by pivoting from sneakers to AI, before much of that enthusiasm waned. Pavlovski said RUM isn't making a pivot, nor is it "just jumping into the AI space and cloud space because it's hot."

Shares of Rumble jumped 17% in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

Rumble's cloud business counts Truth Social and the NFL's Miami Dolphins as customers. It announced intentions to purchase Germany-based Northern Data last August.

Earlier this month, Rumble announced a multiyear agreement to provide computing capacity powered by Nvidia's (NVDA) Blackwell graphics processing units to an AI-native cloud provider.

"We want to compete with the hyperscalers, and buying Northern Data kind of adds to that," Pavlovski told MarketWatch.

The acquisition provides the company with 22,000 Nvidia H100 and H200 chips across nine data centers, and up to 250 megawatts of power capacity, it said.

Although RUM's two core businesses are different, Pavlovski envisions them working in synergy, similar to Elon Musk's X social-media platform and AI company xAI, which is now part of SpaceX (SPCX). The video platform offers a large repository of data that can be used to train AI models for new waves, including agentic and physical AI, he said.

Pavlovski said that though the market currently views Rumble more as a video-streaming platform, he thinks cloud activities will make up the majority of revenue in the future.

-Britney Nguyen

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

06-17-26 2013ET