Anthropic signs $13.7 billion computing power deal with Rum Group, a company associated with Trump.

AI unicorn Anthropic is extending its computing power footprint into emerging cloud service providers with strong political leanings.

On September 13, The Information, citing sources familiar with the matter, reported that Anthropic had signed a six-year, $13.7 billion computing power leasing agreement with Rum Group.

Rum Group, formerly the conservative video platform Rumble, had early investors including Peter Thiel and current US Vice President JD Vance. The platform also hosted Trump's Truth Social and official White House live streams. This deal brings Anthropic even closer to Trump's political circle. The media often refers to the company as a "Trump-linked" firm.

Following the signing of the agreement, Anthropic's total computing power procurement will further expand. As previously reported, Anthropic has signed agreements with several cloud service providers, including Google, SpaceX, and Nscale, over the past year, with a cumulative computing capacity of at least 14.8 gigawatts and a total cost potentially reaching $517 billion over the next decade.

The data center is still under construction, and the financing gap remains to be resolved.

The core asset in this agreement is Rum Group's data center in Maysville, Georgia, which is still under construction.

The facility has 120 megawatts of grid access rights and is expected to expand to 180 megawatts—a scarce resource in the current market environment of limited computing power. Northern Data previously stated that the facility would be operational by the end of this year, but it is unclear whether this timeline is still valid.

The problem is that Rum Group currently does not have enough money to complete this project.

In its August securities filing, Rum Group explicitly stated that it "currently lacks funds" for data center construction and the purchase of equipment such as GPUs, and expects to cover most of the expenditures through debt issuance or equity financing. According to sources familiar with the matter, Rum Group plans to finance the Georgia project through borrowing.

In June, Rum Group CEO Chris Pavlovski told The Information that the company was exploring various financing options, "with debt financing as a priority," and that discussions might involve bringing in external institutions to provide credit support, i.e., enhancing the debt's attractiveness to investors through guarantees or other commitments.

According to previous estimates by The Information, the cost of building and equipping a 1-gigawatt AI data center with server chips is approximately $60 billion. Based on this estimate, the construction cost of the Georgia project may exceed $10 billion. Rum Group has not yet publicly disclosed the full cost of the project.

Anthropic receives stock options, with exercise linked to computing power.

In addition to the procurement of computing power, the agreement also includes an equity arrangement.

According to reports, Anthropic will receive options to purchase up to 51 million shares of Rum Group at 1 cent per share. Rum Group stock closed at $7.17 on Friday, and the company currently has approximately 400 million shares outstanding, with a market capitalization of approximately $2.8 billion.

The exercise conditions of the options are directly linked to the amount of computing power purchased: half of it is tied to the computing power usage of the Maysville data center, while the other half can only be exercised after Anthropic purchases an additional 400 to 500 megawatts of computing power at another site under construction at Rum Group.

Rum Group: From Conservative Video Platform to AI Cloud Service Provider

Rum Group's transformation path is quite unique.

Founded in 2013, Rumble initially positioned itself as a YouTube alternative for small and medium-sized creators, and rapidly expanded among conservative groups after the 2020 US presidential election. In May 2021, Rumble completed a $25 million funding round, with investors including Peter Thiel and JD Vance, valuing the company at $500 million at the time.

In June of this year, Rumble acquired Northern Data, a German emerging cloud service provider, in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $767 million, and subsequently changed its name to Rum Group, officially entering the AI cloud computing business.

The addition of Northern Data brought 22,000 NVIDIA Hopper architecture GPUs to Rum Group, most of which are currently being leased out in the European and American markets, as well as the data center under construction in Georgia.

According to reports, as of June this year, Rum Group also planned to spend $270 million to purchase Nvidia Blackwell 300 chips to fulfill customer contracts with Together AI.

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