According to Silicon Republic, Rumble—the video platform hosting Donald Trump’s Truth Social—is acquiring German AI and computing firm Northern Data in an all-stock deal valued at roughly $767 million. The transaction involves Northern Data shareholders receiving 2.0281 newly issued Rumble shares for each of their shares, with completion expected by Q2 2026. Northern Data’s stock jumped over 30% immediately after the November 10 announcement. The acquisition gives Rumble more than 22,000 Nvidia GPUs, including 20,000 H100s and 2,000 H200s, plus international data centers across seven countries. Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski framed this as building a “freedom-first” AI ecosystem to compete against Big Tech.
The Tether Connection
Here’s the thing that makes this deal particularly interesting: Tether, the stablecoin giant, is deeply involved with both companies. They invested $775 million into Rumble earlier this year and now own more than 38% of the company. They also hold a significant stake in Northern Data. So basically, we’re seeing Tether effectively orchestrating this merger between two of their portfolio companies. That’s some serious financial engineering happening behind the scenes. When you follow the money, this looks less like a traditional acquisition and more like corporate restructuring with a common major shareholder pulling the strings.
The Hardware Play
Let’s talk about those 22,000 Nvidia GPUs for a second. In today’s AI gold rush, GPUs are the picks and shovels—and Rumble just bought themselves a massive hardware arsenal. The H100s and H200s they’re acquiring are exactly the chips everyone’s fighting over to train and run large language models. This isn’t just about video hosting anymore—they’re building serious AI infrastructure. And with data centers spread across the US, UK, Germany, and four other European countries, they’re positioning themselves as a global compute provider. When you can’t compete with AWS or Google Cloud on scale, you compete on ideology—hence all the “freedom-first” messaging.
Competitive Landscape Shift
So what does this mean for the broader market? We’re seeing the emergence of what I’d call “ideological tech stacks.” Rumble isn’t trying to beat Google and Microsoft at their own game—they’re creating an alternative ecosystem for creators and users who are skeptical of mainstream tech. They’re talking about AI chatbots, productivity suites, financial services, all wrapped in “freedom, privacy, independence” branding. It’s a fascinating strategy: build the entire stack rather than just one product. But here’s the billion-dollar question: Can they actually compete on technical merit when their primary selling point seems to be political alignment rather than superior technology?
The Long Game
Looking at their roadmap—AI chatbots, agents, web navigation, financial services—this feels like they’re trying to build a parallel internet. One that’s explicitly positioned against “Big Tech.” The timing is interesting too, coming right after their antitrust lawsuit against Google was dismissed. If you can’t beat them in court, maybe you try to build an alternative? But building all these verticals simultaneously is incredibly ambitious and capital-intensive. With Tether’s deep pockets backing them, they clearly have the funding to try. Whether they can attract enough users outside their existing political base to make this economically viable? That’s the real test ahead.
