A profile of right-wing video service Rumble, which made $6.5M+ in revenue in the first nine months of 2021 and provides Trump's Truth Social with tech support
The company, supported by Donald Trump, Peter Thiel and other prominent conservatives, wants to help build a “new internet” independent from Silicon Valley's titans. Tweets: @jaredlholt , @aaronwall , @ryantate , and @nytimesbusiness Tweets: Jared Holt / @jaredlholt : Rumble appears to be the latest “alternative tech” platform to start talking about the concept of a parallel internet for the cohorts it courts. Other platforms like Gab have expressed similar ambitions — though Rumble has more powerful backers https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... @aaronwall : does not cater to censorship from the rainbow fascism crew => is right wing, even if founder is a liberal. celebrate our human diversity by censoring wrong think OR ELSE! https://twitter.com/... Ryan Tate / @ryantate : Journalistic malpractice to report on Rumble without honest context on YouTube's broad, cross-ideological censorship. It's hit human rights groups (https://theintercept.com/...), leftist pundits (https://theintercept.com/...), those are two examples in an ocean. NYT just grinds its axe https://twitter.com/... @nytimesbusiness : Rumble's chief executive pitches the company, which is based in Toronto, as “immune from cancel culture.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Rumble has spent a year converting political patronage into capital and infrastructure: an undisclosed round led by Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, and other conservative investors in May 2021, then a SPAC merger announced at a $2.1B valuation that closed with a first-day pop in September 2022. This NYT profile adds two load-bearing facts — modest actual revenue ($6.5M+ over nine months of 2021) against that valuation, and a services role: Rumble supplies technical support to Trump's Truth Social.
That makes Rumble more than a video site competing with YouTube for banned creators like Dan Bongino, whose move there kicked off its growth run. Together with RightForge, the hosting firm underpinning Truth Social and nearly 1,000 other sites, it anchors the emerging "parallel internet" stack — and unlike Gab, which voiced similar ambitions with far weaker finances and backers, Rumble has the balance sheet and public-market currency to act on them.
First-order effects
- Truth Social now runs on conservative-owned infrastructure rather than Silicon Valley vendors, with Rumble handling its technical support on top of RightForge's hosting — meaning the platform's uptime and roadmap sit with companies answerable to Trump-aligned backers.
- Rumble's $6.5M nine-month revenue base is small relative to its $2.1B valuation, so its public listing pressures management to convert creator migration and the Trump relationship into monetizable scale quickly.
Second-order effects
- YouTube faces a durable defection channel: right-wing creators banned or constrained there can move to a monetizing rival with committed capital, and equity stakes (as with Bongino) give stars a financial reason to recruit their audiences along.
- Gab's similar "new internet" pitch gets outflanked — well-funded platforms can offer creators both reach and payments, forcing smaller alternative-tech players to differentiate or serve as feeder properties.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, alternative social media consolidates into vertically integrated stacks — hosting, video, and platform layers owned by the same political-financial coalition — turning moderation disputes into a structural market split rather than individual deplatforming events.
- Public-market exposure cuts both ways for this ecosystem: quarterly disclosure requirements will test whether the parallel-internet economy sustains valuations built on audience claims rather than revenue.
The trend: Right-wing media is shifting from scattered ban-evasion platforms toward capitalized, publicly traded infrastructure companies that own the hosting, video, and support layers of a self-described parallel internet.