The Rumble (RUM.US) plans to invest nearly $1.2 billion to acquire the German AI cloud company Northern Data.

US video platform and cloud service provider Rumble (RUM.US) is considering acquiring the German artificial intelligence (AI) Yunji, Inc. Sponsored ADR Class A group Northern Data for around $1.17 billion (1 billion euros). According to statements from both companies, Rumble announced last Sunday that the deal would give them control over Northern Data's GPU-rich Taiga cloud business and the large data center division, Ardent, and they plan to integrate the two into their existing operations. It is understood that the Taiga cloud division has a large inventory of NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US) GPU chips, including approximately 20,480 H100 chips and over 2,000 H200 chips. Northern Data responded on Monday, stating that their board of directors is evaluating Rumble's potential acquisition offer and is willing to engage in further discussions. Based on the terms disclosed by both parties, Rumble plans to exchange 2.319 shares of Rumble stock for each share of Northern Data stock. Based on calculations, this offer values Northern Data at around $18.3 per share, a discount of approximately 32% from the company's recent closing price on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. This would make the total value of the deal around $1.17 billion. If the deal is completed under the current terms, Northern Data shareholders would hold approximately 33.3% of Rumble. Both parties emphasize that the final offer, if reached, is expected to be at a higher valuation. According to the statement, a major shareholder of Northern Data the stablecoin platform Tether has expressed support for the deal. A potential condition of the deal is that Northern Data must divest its cryptocurrency mining business before the transaction, with the proceeds used to repay existing loans provided by Tether to the company. Rumble stated in their announcement, "Upon completion of the transaction, Tether will become a significant customer of the company and sign a multi-year GPU purchasing agreement." However, both parties note that at this time, there is no guarantee that negotiations will result in a formal acquisition offer for the German company.