Anthropic partners with Trump-linked company RUM Group (RUM.US)! $13.7 billion computing power deal sparks concerns over conflicts of interest

According to Jinse Finance APP, citing sources reported by the media, Anthropic has signed a six-year computing power contract with RUM Group (RUM.US) worth a total of 13.7 billion USD. On the 23rd of last month, RUM Group disclosed the 13.7 billion USD contract in regulatory filings, but at the time the counterparty was not revealed. Boosted by this news, as of press time, RUM Group’s pre-market U.S. shares surged by over 11% on Monday.

The most notable aspect of this deal is that Anthropic received options to purchase up to 51 million shares of RUM Group stock at a price of 1 cent per share. Based on RUM Group’s closing price of 7.17 USD on September 11, if exercised in full, Anthropic could realize a paper profit exceeding 360 million USD at current prices. However, the scale of exercise is tied to the actual scale of computing power Anthropic purchases from RUM Group.

The contract with Rum Group is the latest in a series of computing power agreements Anthropic has signed over the past year. As demand for its products Claude Code and Cowork has surged, competition for the computing resources needed for AI model training and inference has intensified, and over the past year Anthropic has consecutively secured multiple large cloud computing procurement deals. Partners include major cloud providers like Google (GOOGL.US), as well as computing service providers such as SpaceX (SPCX.US) and Nscale. In total, these agreements provide at least 14.8 gigawatts of computing power, with estimated costs for the next decade reaching as high as 517 billion USD.

Formerly known as Rumble, Rum Group operates the video sharing platform Rumble, which is very popular among conservative groups; Trump’s Truth Social platform is also hosted on it. Its early investors include Silicon Valley magnate Peter Thiel, one of Trump’s earliest and strongest supporters, and U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance. In June this year, the company acquired German next-generation cloud services provider Northern Data for approximately 767 million USD, officially entering the AI cloud business. Through this acquisition, the company obtained about 22,000 Nvidia Hopper architecture GPUs—H100 and H200—as well as a site for a data center in Georgia, after which it was renamed Rum Group.

Anthropic plans to lease computing power from Rum Group’s data center currently under construction in Maysville, Georgia. However, the facility’s grid connection capacity is only 120 megawatts, and the completion timeline remains uncertain. In last month’s filings, Rum Group stated that funding for data center construction and equipment procurement has not yet been secured, and plans to cover costs through additional debt and equity financing.

The signing of the computing power contract between Anthropic and the Trump-linked Rum Group has raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Investment news outlet TradingKey analyzed that cooperation with Rum Group could increase valuation volatility for Anthropic during its initial public offering (IPO) process. If this arrangement triggers any conflict of interest scrutiny or procurement regulations review, it could cause investor concern.

However, a completely different interpretation sees Anthropic’s friendly relations with the Trump administration as potentially advantageous for winning large government and defense contracts in the future. As AI companies actively compete for U.S. federal government and Department of Defense cloud and AI infrastructure projects, political connections may translate into business opportunities.