Anthropic is the $13.7 billion GPU customer in Trump-linked RUM Group’s deal: report

Anthropic is the previously unnamed customer that agreed last month to buy about $13.7 billion of AI computing services from RUM Group, The Information reported on Sunday evening. RUM Group, which owns the video platform Rumble and the European AI cloud company Northern Data, disclosed the six-year contract on August 24 without naming the buyer.

The customer also receives a warrant to buy up to 50.8 million RUM Group shares for one cent each, according to the company’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That is equal to about 18% of RUM Group’s Class A stock outstanding in early August.

The report, which The Information published at 6:07 p.m. Pacific time under a headline calling RUM Group “Trump-linked,” comes a day after Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei called on AI companies to slow the pace of AI progress, including possible limits on “training compute.” Anthropic and RUM Group had not publicly confirmed the report by Sunday evening.

Article Brief

Key Takeaways

5 Points30s Read

1. 01The report–Anthropic is the unnamed customer in RUM Group’s $13.7 billion, six-year GPU services deal, The Information reported on Sunday evening. Neither company had confirmed it.
2. 02The warrant–The customer can buy up to 50.8 million RUM Group shares at $0.01 each, about 18% of its Class A stock, worth roughly $364 million at Friday’s close if fully vested.
3. 03The owner–Tether and co-founder Giancarlo Devasini reported owning 50.3% of RUM Group’s Class A shares in a September 4 filing.
4. 04The risk–RUM Group says it does not yet have financing to build its Maysville, Georgia, site and buy the GPUs, and its obligations are not conditioned on raising the money.
5. 05The timing–The report came a day after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for pacing AI progress, including possible limits on training compute.

What RUM Group disclosed about the $13.7 billion GPU deal

RUM Group’s Form 8-K, filed on August 24, describes the agreement but identifies the buyer only as “an unaffiliated U.S.-based third party cloud customer.” The key terms:

• Signed: August 23, 2026, between an affiliate of RUM Group and the customer
• What is sold: access to GPUs and GPU services at RUM Group’s site in Maysville, Georgia, which the filing says is “currently under development”
• Size: a total order value of about $13.7 billion, spread evenly across three tranches of roughly $4.57 billion each, a TECHi calculation
• Term: six years
• Condition on the third tranche: the customer must first review and approve RUM Group’s proposed delivery date before any obligations for that tranche apply

That last clause gives the buyer an exit point on a third of the contract. If RUM Group cannot deliver the third tranche on a schedule the customer accepts, the commitment covers about $9.1 billion rather than $13.7 billion. The matching 16.67% slice of the warrant would not vest either, because each step of vesting is tied to the customer’s purchase of a tranche.

The penny warrant: up to 50.8 million RUM Group shares

The warrant is the more unusual part of the deal. Under the term sheet described in the filing, the customer can buy up to 50,808,408 Class A shares at an exercise price of $0.01 each. It vests in two halves:

• First 50%: vests in three equal steps of 16.67% as the customer buys each of the three GPU tranches
• Remaining 50%: vests in five steps of 10% each, but only if the two companies sign new “expansion” agreements. Full vesting requires expansion purchases of more than two and a half times the first three tranches, which implies more than $34 billion of additional GPU services, by TECHi’s arithmetic.

At RUM Group’s Friday close of $7.17, the full warrant would be worth about $364 million and the first half about $182 million. The warrant can be exercised for 10 years, by cash payment only, and its exercise is subject to antitrust requirements. The filing also restricts transfers of the shares to RUM Group’s competitors, activist investors or anyone who would end up holding 10% or more of the Class A stock.

The structure mirrors at least one other AI infrastructure deal disclosed this year in which a supplier handed equity to a major customer. TECHi reported on Sunday that HPE gave Oracle a warrant for 4.16 million shares at one cent each, vesting as Oracle buys networking equipment, in its analysis of why HPE stock jumped 12%. In both cases, the customer is paid partly in the supplier’s stock for committing to buy.

Who controls RUM Group: Tether owns 50.3%

RUM Group’s largest shareholder is Tether, the company behind the USDT stablecoin. In a Schedule 13D amendment filed on September 4, Tether entities and Tether co-founder Giancarlo Devasini reported beneficial ownership of 261.5 million Class A shares, or 50.3% of the class.

RUM Group took its current form after Rumble combined with Northern Data, the Tether-backed German AI cloud and computing company. According to RUM Group’s quarterly report, the consideration for Northern Data included 59.3 million Class A shares and 98.3 million pre-funded warrants, each valued at $7.29, plus a euro-denominated note issued to Tether, for total consideration of about $1.52 billion. In a separate filing on September 10, RUM Group said it expects to raise its ownership of Northern Data to about 98% around September 30, under an agreement with Tether.

That ownership structure means a company that has called for industry coordination on AI safety would be buying computing capacity from a business majority-owned by a stablecoin issuer, and could hold up to about 18% of its Class A shares, based on the share count RUM Group reported in early August. The Information described RUM Group as Trump-linked in its headline; TECHi could not view the full report behind its paywall.

RUM Group says it has not yet financed the data center

The 8-K includes a new risk factor that bears directly on Anthropic’s side of the deal. RUM Group wrote: “We do not currently have financing to fund these expenditures, and our obligations under the Commercial Agreement are not subject to any financing condition or contingency.”

The company said it expects to fund “a substantial portion” of the costs of building the Maysville facility and buying GPUs through new debt or equity, and warned that equity financing “could result in significant dilution to our existing stockholders.” If it cannot raise the money, it said, it may be unable to “complete the facility, acquire the necessary GPUs and related equipment, meet applicable delivery milestones or otherwise timely perform,” which could expose it to penalties and damage claims.

For comparison, RUM Group’s quarterly report for the period ended June 30 listed about $253 million of non-cancellable contractual commitments. A $13.7 billion delivery obligation is more than 50 times that figure.

For the customer, the main exposure is delivery risk. Under the filing, the warrant vests only as it buys each tranche, so delays at Maysville would slow both the computing capacity it receives and the equity it earns.

Anthropic’s compute deal and its call to pace AI

The timing of the report is what makes it significant. In his essay “We Must Pace the Frontier,” published on Saturday, Amodei wrote that “we must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” and that companies “should also consider pacing based on limiting the ingredients that go into frontier models, such as training compute.”

He also wrote that pacing “does not mean halting model training or technical progress.” A GPU contract signed about three weeks before the essay does not contradict that on its own, because the same capacity can serve paying customers as well as train new models. But it shows how much computing Anthropic had already committed to buy while its chief executive was preparing to argue for restraint.

Investors are weighing both sides of that. The Financial Times reported late Sunday that Anthropic expects a second profitable quarter as its IPO nears, with gross margins above 80% before training costs. And when trading opened in Asia on Monday, SoftBank shares sank nearly 12% as investors reassessed AI-linked stocks after the weekend’s calls to slow the technology.

RUM Group stock: up on the deal, down 30% since

RUM Group shares, which trade on Nasdaq under the ticker RUM, rose 3.4% to $9.36 on August 24, the day the deal was disclosed before the market opened, and gained another 9.3% the next day to close at $10.23. They have fallen since, closing at $7.17 on Friday, down 29.9% from that August 25 close and 20.8% below their $9.05 close before the announcement.

Monday will be the first U.S. trading session since the customer was reported to be Anthropic. The name of a frontier AI lab with a reported $2 trillion IPO target could change how investors judge the contract’s reliability, even though the filing’s terms have not changed.

What to watch next

Confirmation. Neither Anthropic nor RUM Group had confirmed The Information’s report by Sunday evening. A statement from either company, or a filing naming the customer, would settle it.

The definitive warrant agreement. The filing says the parties signed a binding term sheet and will negotiate a definitive warrant agreement, which RUM Group will file with a periodic report. That document will show the final terms.

Financing for Maysville. Any debt or equity raise by RUM Group to build the Georgia site will show whether it can meet the delivery schedule, and how much dilution existing shareholders face.

RUM stock in U.S. trading. Pre-market trading begins at 4 a.m. Eastern on Monday, and the regular session opens at 9:30 a.m.

Northern Data. RUM Group expects to reach about 98% ownership of Northern Data around September 30, consolidating the AI cloud business that is expected to deliver the GPU capacity.