Tether-Backed Rumble Signs Merger Agreement with Northern Data, Emerging as a European AI Computing Powerhouse

On November 10th, the U.S. video and cloud platform Rumble entered into a business merger agreement with Frankfurt-listed artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure company Northern Data. Rumble will commence a voluntary public stock swap acquisition of all the outstanding shares of the latter. By means of this merger, Rumble will obtain access to one of the largest GPU asset portfolios in Europe, thereby expanding its footprint in cloud computing and artificial intelligence. The transaction also intensifies Rumble's collaboration with Tether, with the latter committing to offer substantial customer and business support for the deal. Under the acquisition offer, each Northern Data share can be exchanged for 2.0281 shares of the newly issued Rumble Class A stock, and there is no minimum acceptance threshold set. This implies that the transaction can proceed even if only a small number of shareholders accept the offer. However, this ratio is slightly lower than the 2.319 shares proposed when Rumble initially announced the acquisition plan in August of this year, with a potential transaction valuation of approximately $1.17 billion. This transaction is anticipated to be completed in the first or second quarter of 2026, contingent upon regulatory approval and other conditions. At that time, Northern Data's shares will be delisted. If all the outstanding shares participate in the stock swap, Northern Data shareholders will hold approximately 30.4% of the merged company. After the transaction, Rumble will also assume Northern Data's €610 million (approximately $705 million) shareholder loan owed to Tether. Half of this loan will be converted into Rumble stock at a price of $7.88 per share, and the remaining part will be refinanced through a new collateralized loan provided by Tether.