Palantir founder and Silicon Valley conservative Peter Thiel, along with potential senate candidate J.D. Vance are leading an investment in Rumble, a video hosting platform competing with YouTube that is popular with prominent conservatives.
According to Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski, part of the funding will be invested in cloud infrastructure. This will allow Rumble to compete with, and avoid dependence on, traditional cloud hosting providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The decision of AWS to blacklist Parler earlier this year led to the free speech-friendly platform being knocked offline at the height of its user growth, following the banning of Donald Trump from most major tech platforms in January.
The investment in Rumble is led by Narya, a Cincinnati-based venture capital firm co-founded by J.D. Vance and Colin Greenspon. According to the Wall Street Journal, the investment values the company at $500 million.
Narya is joined in this investment by Peter Thiel, the entrepreneur and venture capitalist who has a long and storied track record of investing in frontier technology companies, including PayPal, Facebook, Palantir Technologies, Compass Pathways, and many other ventures.
Thiel is known for bucking progressive political trends in Silicon Valley. He was the only tech billionaire to openly support Donald Trump in 2016.
In the past year, Rumble’s monthly viewership has grown from 1.6 million users per month to an average of 31 million per month in the first quarter of 2021 – an increase of more than 1,800 percent.
Popular conservative influencers who use the platform include Dinesh D’Souza, Dan Bongino, Charlie Kirk, Michael Knowles, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), and the Hodge Twins. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) also joined the platform recently after YouTube issued his official channel with a temporary suspension for hosting a COVID-19 round table with signees of the Great Barrington Declaration.
“We couldn’t be more excited to welcome aboard investors that are aligned with our long-term vision. This investment is evidence that the market really desires competition and freedom of choice. These funds will help us launch our new cloud services, enhance our video platform, and help create the rails for a new economy that is desperately needed” said Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.