Key Takeaways
Rumble Inc. (NASDAQ: RUM) is pivoting to become an artificial intelligence infrastructure provider, with its pending acquisition of Northern Data AG poised to give it a significant foothold in the competitive market for GPU cloud services.
"Cloud will become a pillar alongside video," Rumble Chairman and CEO Chris Pavlovski said on the company's earnings call, adding that early signs suggest cloud "should be the largest generator of revenue" for the company.
The company reported first-quarter revenue rose 7% from the prior year to $25.5 million, while its net loss widened to $30.3 million, driven by costs related to the Northern Data transaction. Rumble has secured approximately 81.3% of Northern Data’s shares, with the deal expected to close in June 2026, a move that will bring roughly 22,000 GPUs and multiple data centers under its control.
This acquisition thrusts Rumble into the high-stakes AI infrastructure space, where it will compete with established hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. The company's success now hinges on its ability to integrate Northern Data's assets and secure large-scale contracts for its planned GPU-as-a-service offerings.
Rumble's first-quarter results reflect its ongoing transformation. While revenue saw a modest 7% increase, driven by a $2.6 million rise in audience monetization, sales and marketing expenses surged 134% to $8.5 million. The company attributed the marketing increase to a deliberate investment in its brand and the expansion of Rumble Cloud's commercial operations.
Cost of services fell 10% to $27 million, but the company's net loss grew to $30.3 million from $2.7 million in the year-ago quarter. This was primarily due to non-cash items and $4.8 million in acquisition-related costs. Rumble ended the quarter with $233.4 million in total liquidity.
The Northern Data acquisition is the centerpiece of Rumble's strategy to build an integrated AI and cloud platform. Pavlovski highlighted that Northern Data's GPU utilization rose from 62% in December 2025 to approximately 85% in March 2026, driving its first-quarter revenue to roughly EUR 43 million.
Rumble is already in negotiations with multiple potential customers for its GPU-as-a-service offerings and is evaluating non-dilutive financing to expand its GPU capacity further. The company has also launched one-click deployment of the OpenClaw AI model on Rumble Cloud and is partnering with firms like Anchorage Digital and Tether to build out its cloud and crypto infrastructure services.
While the focus shifts to the cloud, Rumble's core video platform continues to grow, reaching 56 million monthly active users in the quarter. The growth was partly attributed to the rollout of Rumble Shorts, a feature that is not yet monetized.
The lack of monetization for Shorts negatively impacted the average revenue per user (ARPU), but the company plans to begin monetizing the feature in the second half of 2026. Pavlovski also noted that a $100 million advertising commitment from Tether has begun to scale and is expected to become more material in the latter half of the year.
For investors, Rumble's strategic pivot presents both a significant opportunity and a substantial risk. The company is using its established video platform and user base as a launchpad to enter the capital-intensive, high-growth AI cloud market. Its future valuation will likely depend less on video user growth and more on its ability to execute the integration of Northern Data and capture a share of the booming demand for AI computation.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
