Anthropic is leasing 13.7 billion dollars of compute over six years from Rumble owner RUM Group
Anthropic has signed a six-year, 13.7 billion dollar computing deal with RUM Group, the owner of the video platform Rumble and the AI cloud company Northern Data, The Information reported on Sunday evening, citing a person familiar with the matter. RUM Group had disclosed the contract to US regulators on 24 August without naming the buyer, together with a warrant for up to 50.8 million shares at one cent each. Neither company has confirmed the report, and RUM Group has not yet financed the Georgia site.
Artificial Intelligence··Midday
A six-year lease on top of 14.8 gigawatts of earlier deals
The Information published the report on Sunday evening Pacific time, citing a person familiar with the matter: Anthropic is to lease 13.7 billion dollars of computing capacity from RUM Group over six years. The report frames the agreement as the latest in a string of cloud deals the company has struck over the past year as demand for its Claude Code and Cowork products climbs; the counterparties include the major cloud provider Google, the technology company SpaceX and the smaller cloud firm Nscale, and together those agreements represent at least 14.8 gigawatts of capacity and cost as much as 517 billion dollars over the next decade. TECHi, which relayed the report, notes that it appeared a day after Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei called on AI companies to slow the pace of progress, including possible limits on training compute, and that it could not view the full text behind The Information's paywall.[1], [2]
The 24 August filing: an unnamed buyer, a penny warrant and no financing yet
RUM Group, which owns the video platform Rumble and the European AI cloud company Northern Data, had disclosed the six-year contract in a Form 8-K filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 24 August, identifying the buyer only as an unaffiliated US-based third-party cloud customer. Under the terms described there, the customer receives a warrant to buy up to 50.8 million Class A shares for one cent each, about 18 percent of the Class A stock outstanding in early August; the warrant vests as each tranche of the contract is purchased, can be exercised for 10 years and cannot be transferred to RUM Group's competitors or activist investors. The filing also gives the buyer an exit on the final third: if RUM Group cannot deliver the third tranche on a schedule the customer accepts, the commitment covers about 9.1 billion dollars rather than 13.7 billion dollars. The same filing states that RUM Group does not currently have financing for the Maysville facility in the US state of Georgia or for the graphics processors, expects to fund a substantial portion through new debt or equity, and warns that it may otherwise be unable to complete the facility or meet delivery milestones.[2], [1]
Tether's majority stake and what remains unconfirmed
RUM Group's largest shareholder is Tether, the company behind the USDT stablecoin: in a filing dated 4 September, Tether entities and co-founder Giancarlo Devasini reported owning 50.3 percent of the Class A shares. RUM Group took its current form when Rumble combined with Northern Data, the Tether-backed German AI cloud company, and said on 10 September that it expects to raise its stake in Northern Data to about 98 percent around 30 September. The report thus places a company that has just called for industry coordination on AI safety as the customer of a business majority-owned by a stablecoin issuer, with the option of a stake of up to about 18 percent in its Class A shares. As of Sunday evening neither Anthropic nor RUM Group had confirmed the report, and neither the hardware covered by the deal nor the date deliveries begin has been disclosed.[2], [1]
