Rumble acquires German AI firm Northern Data for $767 million

Under the agreement, Northern Data shareholders will receive 2.0281 new Rumble Class A shares for each of their existing shares. Once completed – expected in the second quarter of 2026 – Northern Data shareholders will hold 30.4% of the combined company. The firm will also be delisted from the German stock exchange.

Rumble shares rose more than 25% in premarket trading amid optimism about its expansion into artificial intelligence and cloud services.

Alongside the acquisition, Rumble signed a $150 million partnership with Tether, the largest issuer of the USDT stablecoin and a 48% shareholder in Rumble. Tether will become a major client of the new joint cloud division, while Rumble will invest $200 million in tax support and acquire 22,400 Nvidia GPUs to expand its AI infrastructure.

Northern Data had been exploring strategic options after withdrawing its annual forecast in October due to volatility in the GPU market. The company had previously considered selling its Corpus Christi data center and pledged to pay shareholders $200 million in cash if the sale is completed before the merger.

The merger between Rumble and Northern Data highlights a broader consolidation trend in AI infrastructure, where crypto-linked companies are becoming increasingly influential. For Rumble, backed by Tether, the deal marks its evolution from a video platform into a diversified tech holding spanning media, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.

The alliance between Rumble, Tether, and Northern Data aims to build a unified ecosystem combining media, blockchain, and AI, with ambitions to compete in the GPU cloud market across the U.S. and Europe.