Why The Founder Of The Video Platform Rumble Is Now A Billionaire

Forbes

A critical cash injection by crypto giant Tether sent shares of Chris Pavlovski’s YouTube alternative soaring by more than 100% in late December.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2025/01/06/why-the-founder-of-the-right-wing-video-platform-rumble-is-now-a-billionaire/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes, why the founder of the right-wing video platform Rumble is now a billionaire.

00:09Plenty of people got presents at the end of December, but Rumble founder and CEO Chris Pavlovsky had a particularly lucrative holiday season.

00:18On December 20th, Pavlovsky's cash-strapped YouTube alternative, which claims the mantle of free speech and is popular with the political right,

00:27announced a $775 million investment from crypto giant Tether.

00:33That sent Rumble's stock soaring by more than 100% over the next week and made Pavlovsky a billionaire.

00:41Forbes estimates that Pavlovsky is now worth around $1.3 billion, thanks to his 25% stake in Rumble,

00:49plus options to acquire an additional 6% stake with a bargain basement exercise price of $0.03 per share.

00:56And that's with Rumble's volatile stock down 17% to $13.43 per share Friday after closing at a peak of $16.27 on December 26th.

01:09Not included in Forbes' estimate of Pavlovsky's fortune are the so-called earn-out shares and options that could boost his stake in Rumble to as high as 44%.

01:20That would be if the company's stock trades above $17.50 per share for 20 days in a 30-day period prior to September 2027,

01:30a scenario that now seems a little less outlandish than it did a month ago.

01:36As part of the deal, Tether will inject $250 million into the still-unprofitable platform's bank account to be used, quote,

01:44to support growth initiatives.

01:47The remaining $525 million of proceeds from the transaction, which values Rumble at only $7.50 per share,

01:55will be used to buy back as much as a quarter of the company's stock, including as much as a 4% stake from Pavlovsky.

02:03But the cash injection couldn't have come at a better time.

02:06Rumble reported net losses of over $100 million through the first nine months of 2024,

02:12bringing its total losses since the beginning of 2023 to $218 million.

02:18Prior to the Tether deal, Rumble had burned through about two-thirds of the more than $300 million in cash it raised when it went public via SPAC merger in September 2022.

02:31Born in Canada, Pavlovsky got his start on the commercial internet early on,

02:36building websites as a Toronto teenager in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

02:41In 2011, he founded Cosmic Development, an IT outsourcing company with offices in Serbia and his parents' home country of North Macedonia.

02:51It now boasts over 250 employees, and Rumble, one of its 90 clients,

02:56paid Cosmic Development over $2.5 million through the first nine months of 2024.

03:03Pavlovsky launched Rumble in 2013 as an alternative to YouTube that helped small creators with rights management.

03:11Then in 2020, conservatives frustrated by perceived censorship in big tech discovered the platform,

03:17boosting its audience from 1 million to 21 million monthly users by the end of the year

03:23and prompting the company's pivot to its current anti-cancel culture, anti-big tech persona.

03:29In 2021, Narya, a venture capital firm co-founded by J.D. Vance with Peter Thiel's help, invested $25 million in Rumble.

03:39The next year, the company went public via a SPAC merger,

03:42and Rumble's stock closed at an all-time high of $16.81 per share on its first day of trading.

03:49The deal was facilitated by Howard Lutnick, the billionaire CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald,

03:56which provides banking services for and has reportedly invested in Tether.

04:01Lutnick is also Donald Trump's current nominee for Commerce Secretary.

04:06From its new Longboat Key, Florida headquarters, which opened in 2023,

04:11Rumble has spent the cash it raised from SPAC investors on becoming a so-called, quote,

04:16mini-Google, as Pawlowski put it, building out its own ad sales system,

04:21acquiring a podcasting and live-streaming platform founded by David Sachs,

04:25a venture capitalist and Trump's new AI and crypto czar, who now sits on Rumble's board,

04:31and launching a cloud services provider.

04:34It has also paid conservative commentators, gaming streamers, sports creators,

04:39and plenty of other online personalities to use Rumble as their platform of choice,

04:44hoping to draw eyeballs away from YouTube and Amazon-owned Twitch.

04:49For full coverage, check out Kyle Kahn Mullins' piece on Forbes.com.

04:55This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

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