Incline · · 28 min

Why AI Agents Don’t Care About Ads, and What That Means for Rumble

With Glenn Rothwell

Key takeaways

  • Rumble acquired Northern Data, a European neo cloud that moved from Bitcoin mining to running GPUs and data centers.

  • The self-custodial Rumble Wallet supports Bitcoin, Tether and Tether Gold and came out just under a year ago.

  • Glenn Rothwell says Rumble must prepare for a future where agents may be the majority of its viewers, while no agent commerce standard is yet well adopted.

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0:00Rumble runs a consumer video arm and Quake AI infrastructure1 of 8

Summary

Rumble's Glenn Rothwell describes how the Northern Data deal feeds an AI infrastructure push, and why AI agents as viewers could upend the ad model.

Rumble has acquired Northern Data, a European neo cloud that started out with roots in Bitcoin mining before moving to GPUs and data centers, according to Glenn Rothwell, who works on crypto and agentic payments at the company. He made the remarks on Stabledash Live, which now streams on Rumble.

Infrastructure for agents

Glenn Rothwell says the business side of the group is called Quake AI, which he describes as "AI infrastructure for the freedom first agentic Internet." It grew out of the partnership with Tether, which he calls Rumble's largest strategic partner and investor. He calls the Northern Data deal a perfect marriage, since Rumble had already been in the data center business.

“Even though we might lose out on users or revenue or whatever in this market, we're not gonna, like, set aside our values of freedom of speech and preserving that.”
Glenn Rothwell

A wallet for creators

The crypto product that is live today is Rumble Wallet, which Rothwell says came out just under a year ago after an announcement at last year's Plan B conference in Lugano. It supports Bitcoin and Tether, and Tether Gold was added for interested users. He says the wallet is fully self-custodial, with users able to export their seed phrase at any time.

In his personal opinion, the market for censorship-resistant payouts is relatively limited in the US. He notes Tether is releasing USAT as a GENIUS Act compliant version for US markets.

Beyond deplatformed voices

Glenn Rothwell says Rumble will give up users or revenue in a market rather than set aside its free speech values. He points to sports, including a WWE partnership now streamed every week, and says creators earn better payouts than on YouTube or X.

When agents watch

Until recently most of Rumble's revenue came from ads, Rothwell says. He has yet to see a well adopted standard for agent commerce, and cites Amazon blocking the Muse agent as a short solution from a company far larger than Rumble. He expects that the majority of viewers may one day be agents directed by humans or acting semi autonomously.

Glenn Rothwell frames AI as "extremely empowering" for creative people, and expects trusted individual creators to replace mainstream media as a source of news. Northern Data and Quake AI are how Rumble plans to build for that shift.

Rumble, Tether, Amazon, and Quake AI come up most.

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