Anthropic joins hands with Trump affiliate RUM Group (RUM.US)! $13.7 billion computing power bill raises concerns about conflict of interest

Zhitong Finance App learned that, according to media reports citing people familiar with the matter, Anthropic has signed a six-year computing power contract with RUM Group (RUM.US) with a total value of 13.7 billion US dollars. RUM Group disclosed the $13.7 billion contract in regulatory documents on the 23rd of last month, but did not disclose the counterparty at the time. Boosted by this news, as of press release, RUM Group's US stocks surged more than 11% before the market on Monday.

The most notable aspect of the deal was that Anthropic received the option to buy up to 51 million shares of RUM Group at a price of 1 cent per share. Based on RUM Group's closing price of $7.17 on September 11, if fully exercised, Anthropic could achieve book revenue of over $360 million at current prices. However, the scale of exercise is linked to the amount of computing power Anthropic actually purchased 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 market demand for Claude Code and Cowork products explodes, competition for computing power resources required for AI model training and inference has also intensified. In the past year, Anthropic has successively signed large cloud computing purchase orders. Partners include large cloud vendors such as Google (GOOGL.US) as well as computing power service providers such as SpaceX (SPCX.US) and Nscale. Together, all of these agreements can provide at least 14.8 gigawatts of computing power, and the cost over the next ten years is estimated to be as high as 517 billion US dollars.

Rum Group, formerly known as Rumble, operates Rumble, a video-sharing platform popular among conservatives, and Trump's Social Truth social networking platform is also hosted on this platform. Early investors include Silicon Valley mogul Peter Thiel, the earliest and strongest supporter of Trump, and US Vice President J.D. Vance. In June of this year, the company acquired Northern Data, a new German cloud service provider, for approximately US$767 million and officially entered the AI cloud business. Through this acquisition, the company acquired approximately 22,000 Nvidia Hopper architecture GPUs — H100 and H200 — and a data center site in Georgia, then changed its name to Rum Group.

Anthropic plans to lease computing power from Rum Group's Maysville, Georgia data center currently under construction. However, the facility's grid access capacity is only 120 megawatts, and the completion schedule is still uncertain. In last month's filing, Rum Group said it has not yet secured the funding required for data center construction and equipment procurement, and plans to cover the costs through additional debt and equity financing.

Anthropic's signing of a computing power contract with Trump's close relationship with Rum Group has raised concerns about conflicts of interest. Investment information media TradingKey analyzed that cooperation with Rum Group may increase Anthropic's valuation fluctuation during its initial public offering (IPO) process. Should this arrangement lead to a conflict of interest or procurement regulatory scrutiny, investors may be concerned.

However, another very different interpretation suggests that a friendly relationship with the Trump administration may actually help Anthropic win large government and defense contracts in the future. As AI companies actively seek cloud and AI infrastructure projects from the US federal government and the Department of Defense, political connections may turn into business opportunities.