Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Chris Pavlosvki

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

Chris Pavlovski is the founder and CEO of Rumble, an online video and cloud services platform launched in 2013 as an alternative to YouTube for independent creators. As CEO, he has positioned Rumble as a next generation infrastructure and video platform aimed at empowering creators and businesses that are wary of content moderation on larger tech platforms. Under his leadership, Rumble grew from roughly one million users before 2020 to tens of millions of monthly active users. He continues to scale Rumble globally, investing in cloud, payments, and AI capabilities to compete across both media and technology markets. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: AG1 https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

tetragrammaton. By 2008 and 2009, there was no game in town to compete on video. It was absolutely impossible to compete against Google and YouTube. It was so difficult even years and years later. I remember when I was going around saying, hey, I think there's an opportunity emerging where we can help the small guy, the small crater, get distribution. I went to various VCs and pitched all of them and they nobody bit.

YouTube was the 800-pound gorilla and why would you start something to compete? Exactly. It was impossible in their eyes to compete against YouTube. So I started Rumble in 2013 entirely on the premise of trying to help these small creators, like, you know, think the America's Funniest Home Videos type of creators get their distribution. So what I started to see from once Google integrated YouTube into their search is that I started to notice that they started pivoting. And the way they were pivoting was that they were just like search. They always promised that search would be free and fair.

And basically they're not going to rig the search results to be biased in anything. They also said the same thing with YouTube. It's going to be just an open platform. It's going to fall under Section 230. And we're not going to do any biases or algorithmic changes that are going to. to control what people see and hear. And I started noticing this in 2009 and 2010 where they started picking winners. And by 2013, it got to the point where it was very obvious to me that if you're a big brand, if you were part of a multi-channel network, which is like an umbrella that wouldn't

manage a bunch of influencers, if you were a big influencer, if you were somebody that they think they could monetize, you would get preference. So they would be. So they would try to build stars, would you say? That wasn't their intention. I think their intention at the time was to figure out the best way to monetize. And if a big corporation was creating the content, they could feel a little more comfortable monetizing that content than someone that filmed something at their home. And a lot of material in the early days was just ripped and put on. So there was a lot of illegal material. YouTube was built on the backs of stolen content. In my opinion, I believe that, like, they grew because they had an enormous amount of stolen content.

I mean, now looking back, it's stolen content. But at the time, it was just a resource to be able to see the things that you want to see that you can't access anywhere else. Yeah, it's like because all these large companies were not forward thinking enough to be able to match the times. Most people didn't digitize their library by then. Exactly. Yeah. So what would end up happening is you'd put a Saturday night live. clip, someone else will take that Saturday Night Live clip, build their audience and monetize that video, monetize someone else's content.

Something you liked on TV and then uploaded that to your YouTube. Yeah, that was a lot of YouTube's early days for sure. And they had a lot of lawsuits because at Viacom, the music industry went after them. Like, there was a lot coming at them. And when Google took on YouTube, I think they were very aware of the challenges that they were going to have with that. What ended up happening, I think because of all this copyright and because of all those challenges, they were really kind of looking for content they feel safer to monetize. That's kind of the opinion I had.

But in the process of doing that, they left behind your friends, your families, your aunts, your uncles, their content, the small creator. The people that actually built YouTube. Yeah, exactly. The, you know, the Charlie Bit My Finger type of content, the America's Funniest Home Videos type of content,

stuff like that. So that was the opportunity identified. And in 2013, the whole idea and the whole premise of starting Rumble was to, like, focus on this cohort of small creators that were basically being deprioritized in YouTube that weren't getting distribution. There was rules in place where they couldn't even monetize anymore. You had to hit a certain amount of hours. So we saw this opportunity to build Rumble to kind of help this creator in a way,

the one that was being censored by YouTube in it. You could call it censorship. You'd call it like deprioritized. You'd call it whatever you really want, but they were just not, you know, prioritized by YouTube in any way. say it was like the independent option to the corporate giant? Correct. Yeah. Home-based creators, small creators. How did you come up with the name? So the person who, that's actually one of the coolest stories.

At a high school, I started websites, like passing around funny pictures, funny jokes. So this is pre- YouTube. Yeah, this is pre-U-DUtube. This is like 2001, 2003. And I started a website doing that. And then I remember I actually get a message from one of my high school friends that I consider him like a genius. And he was like, hey, check out this website. This is going to be like the number one video website on the planet.

And I look at it. And he at the time actually owned one of the largest video websites on the planet in 2000. I would say four or five-ish. And he's like, no, these guys are going to crush me because I can't afford the hosting bills. And they got money to do it. And it was YouTube. This is before YouTube became popular. I was like, okay.

One of the businesses he had, it was a domain business where he owned, I think, like 20 to 30,000 domains. Wow. One of them was Rumble.com. I woke up on my 30th birthday. And he was like, Chris, here's the code for the domain name. It's yours. Go build that video business to beat YouTube. It's going to be worth a billion dollars one day.

No joke. That was his exact words. Amazing. What he did. It was a birthday gift at 30 from a friend in high school. Good gift. Best gift ever for me, one of the best I've ever received. It was quite the generous gift for sure.

It's a very valuable name, even prior to Rumble. And he saw the potential of what it had, and he gave it to me for my birthday and never forget that. Tell me about the world of video websites. Like, how many were there? There was, like, dozens, you know, like college humor. Vimeo was a little later, but, like, break.com, which was bigboys.com. There was a bunch of these e-bombs world.

What would be on them? Like, how long would the videos be? They're usually viral clips, like a minute or two. Would the creators make them and then post them on their own website? You know what? It was more like the actual home viral clips, things that people would film at home, and then they'd send them to the, you know, an email box so that these websites would post them, and then they would go viral.

But it was like a fragmented, everybody could be their own creator within their own house and be able to submit content to these websites, and there was dozens of them. And then YouTube came along, and then Daily Motion and a bunch of these other ones came along. Those were all aggregators. Correct. Yes.

So first it was like editorally controlled by like sites like eBomb's world. And then eventually the idea of aggregating it and creating like one place where everybody can upload were like the Daily Motions and the YouTube's and the live videos at the time. There was like a whole bunch of them at Meta Cafe. And those started to blossom. Then Google buys YouTube and overnight crushes all these businesses at once.

How difficult was that business to build? Infrastructure-wise, what did you need to have a website that hosted videos then? It was really expensive to host. So you needed financing. You needed money. You definitely needed a bunch of developers to develop it. But it was a game at that time where you couldn't really monetize it. You were going to be kind of upside down until, you know, the industry figured it out.

it took YouTube like a decade to figure out how to monetize now they're a $40 billion company. But it was a very expensive endeavor to like get into video, do the video processing, the encoding, the storage of it. And it's still expensive. Even today, it can get very, very expensive. The barrier entry is like pretty high. You have to have the means and the money to be able to do it. And then the other part was getting the distribution.

I look at this as like probably the more difficult part is getting. people to actually come to the platform and use it. And, you know, Google, what they did was basically every single thing you would search for in their search engine would now be a YouTube video. So then all these guys, and myself included, all our sites basically that were getting search traffic, no longer got search traffic, and it all got funneled into. So before YouTube, if you were searching for a certain kind of video, someone might end up going to Google and getting to your site. Yeah, or eBombs world or, you know, daily motions. It was like you'd look at the search engine and they'd fairly treat every single other website to divert their distribution to.

At the time, Google Search was like the main route for distribution. So if that group of creators is no longer finding voice of YouTube, it does sound like there'll be people who want to watch that stuff because they wanted to watch it on YouTube when that was the focus of YouTube. Correct. So, you know, they move their platform more to this, like, highly produced stuff, big craters, big corporations. And we were kind of still focusing on the grassroots, on the grassroots stuff. And, you know, we built a really good business doing that. It was a solid business. What would you say the nature of the content was in general? Like, what did it go from and to? You know, I would say cute cats and dogs and cute family babies and just family-based content. And then 2020 happened where everything changed overnight. In the middle, in the summer of 2020,

it was, I got a call from at the time, the ranking member of the House Intel Committee in Congress. I didn't know him. I didn't know anybody in politics. Rumble's politics were cats and dog videos at the very most. It was never started as a political thing. Yeah, and I'm a Canadian, right? So it's like, you know, I started it just to help the small crater.

And then I got a call in the summer of 2020. And he asked like a really simple question. He's like, Chris, if I were to bring my content to Rumble and if I search for my name, will I be able to find it? And I'm like, yeah, that's how it works, right? Yeah, that's the way it should work. But we all knew what happened with the YouTube and the fixing the-

Nobody knows. I mean, maybe you know. I didn't know. Yeah. So in 2006, like in 2007, that was when Google integrated YouTube and then cut us all off. So I guess from my perspective, it was something that I was very aware of, that things could be changed and manipulated in a way to benefit whatever.

In this case, it was to benefit YouTube back in 2006. So when I got in the call and him asking whether you should bring his podcast over to Rumble, he brings it. And within two to three months, he gets two to 300,000 subscribers on Rumble. This was like mind-blowing to us. We never seen anything like this. What would have been a big account before that on Rumble? You know, 10,000, 5,000.

He had like 2 to 300,000 within a couple months. And at that time, how many creators were there on Rumble? We had a million, a roughly amount of million users per month. And that was over how many years? That was in business for about seven years. Seven years. Six to seven years. And he brings it to our site.

He gets 2 to 300,000 within two to three months. Whereas on YouTube, he's been on YouTube for four years. And he only has 10,000. 11,000 by the time he had 2 to 300,000 on Rumble. At that point in time, did you have any other competitors besides YouTube? Were there any other small up-and-coming video platforms? There's like you had Daily Motion, you had a few, but like I said, they all kind of got wiped out in 2007, 2008.

No one really kind of stood around to try to compete in that market. We were kind of like the only one really that was still trying. And ultimately, I've always wanted to compete against them because I felt like they, you know, they got unfairly boosted by Google in 2007, which I thought was, you know, against everything that they said Google said they would do is what, and they did exactly that. So deep down, I wanted to, I definitely wanted to compete against YouTube as a whole and do better, whereas I felt, you know, they were, they were picking and choosing and not helping the small guy. I felt like we could do it better than they were doing it. I feel like there are so many companies that get started because of someone who felt like they weren't being treated right by the big guy, so I'm going to do it myself. Yeah.

And that's what this is. Exactly. That's like what really kind of drove the passion to do it. As a Canadian, every Canadian has a temperature for American politics, maybe not as much as an American, but quite a bit because we're right there. And when you see what happened on Rumble, I remember I was like talking to one of my developers. I'm like, hey, is this real? Like, is this actually happening?

He was going through the logs. He's looking at it. He's like, it's real. This is as real as it gets. And we're sitting there scratching our heads thinking we didn't think it was this bad. The fact that like the congressman in California, an elected official only had 11,000 subs on YouTube with road science promoting YouTube for four years. And he comes to Rumble and gets 200,000 like.

virtually overnight. So that was like a real wake-up. And from that moment, Rumble went from a million users watching content to about 30 million users within like six months. And yeah, that takes us to where we are today. So it went through this explosive growth around 2020, late 2020 and 2021. And it was basically because we just didn't do anything to throttle anybody. We were just keeping an open and fair platform without, you know, same terms and conditions that YouTube had a decade ago. It was no different. Same rules, just not, you know, pushing something down and pushing something up.

It was just allowing people to upload and bring their content within our terms of service onto the platform. And I remember in the summer of 2021, we see an account, it says Russell Brand on there. And we're like, is this the real Russell brand? And we reached out and it's a real Russell brand. It was quite the moment when you see all this growth happen kind of overnight. Would you say the majority of things that you can find on Rumble are also on YouTube? Yeah.

I would say the majority for sure. But for some reason, on YouTube, people don't watch them and on Rumble people do watch them. Yeah, it's on YouTube, they're probably pushed down. And on Rumble, they're not pushed up or pushed down. They're just treated fairly. If you search for it, you're going to find it. So, you know, Dan Bongino had a huge channel on YouTube when he came to Rumble. And late 2020, he came to Rumble.

He had 700,000 subscribers on YouTube, but for some reason it accumulated over 3 million on Rumble. That's wild. And that kept happening. It happened to, you know, so many people, especially in politics. And I guess kind of over 2021 and 2022, we took in our first investment in 2021, April. And it was funny because I did pitch the investor we pit, one of the investors that we pitched in 2014 that had no interest. But in 2021, that changed. And then they invested.

So that was pretty cool. But we took our first investment in 2021. What could you afford to do differently when you had an investment? Well, at that time, we had to build our own infrastructure because of what was happening due to politics. A lot of the platforms were shutting things down, like a lot of the hosting platforms. wouldn't allow specific type of content that was, you know, all political bias. So everything on the internet is hosted by someone? Yes.

And what are the options for hosting? The way I used to build things back in the days, you know, I even rented space in a data center and put servers in there. And that was kind of the way everyone did it in the early days. I did that all the way up until, you know, 2020, probably. But eventually these cloud companies came into play. they kind of dominate the market. So you have like Amazon, AWS, you have Microsoft. When you started, that wasn't even an option.

Back in the early 2000s, no, that wasn't, they didn't exist. You got Microsoft, Amazon, Google Cloud. So you have these huge cloud companies. Was that a big part of the expense, the hosting part of it? Yes. I see. So buy these cloud companies existing, more people could start. It was a lower barrier of entry.

No, I wouldn't go there. I would say it was more expensive to use a cloud provider than it was to rent a server. Yeah. So if you were- Why would anyone do it then? Because they convinced everybody it's easier to scale that way and they convinced everybody, which it is easier to scale if you get big. So I agree with that.

But they- It's one less thing to do. Yeah, it's one less thing to manage. So they made it easier in the sense of like managing your hosting, but ultimately it's more expensive. If we were to, you know, in 2020, if we were to be on Amazon versus running on our bare metal, it would be far more expensive by a magnitude of probably 10x.

Wow. Yeah, maybe 5x, but like significantly. That's odd because you'd think with the scale that they're doing it on, the service could be provided for much less. You'd think so. That's how they sold us that bill. It seems like that. That's what it was supposed to be when the cloud first emerged.

That's what everyone said. It's going to be so easy to scale. It's going to be a lot cheaper. But that didn't turn out to be the case. It's not the case. It wasn't the case for us. Now, like, we're different. We're like a startup, right?

So if you're a large company, maybe you're if to hire all these guys, this might cost more. But as a startup, it was way easier to go rent a server, you know, put everything on the server using a software overlay, like, C panel and be off to the races and creating your site. That would cost, like, $100 to do that. And then you have, depending on the storage, you're going to use. and the bandwidth you're going to do with video, then it gets really expensive. So it really depends. But I think ultimately for like a startup,

it's a lot cheaper to go the route through bare metal than it is to use a cloud provider. Now, the cloud provider makes it easier to start, and that's what most startups do now. But, you know, I had the muscle memory to do it the other way, so it was cheaper. And luckily, you were doing it long enough to know how to do it the other way.

I think many people who've come since the cloud providers probably don't even know where to start. Correct. I think that's true. It's a lost start. Yeah. So, yeah, what basically happened, I guess, in late, early 2021, late 2020, when Parlor got shut down, Amazon decided to pull the plug on all their cloud. And they weren't able to move to bare metal because they didn't have the know-how

or the resources to move to that large of a scale over to bare metal overnight. It took them like four months. So they were out of business basically at that moment when that... The only things that have ever been shut down been based on politics? No, no, you can get shut down for illegal content, not illegal. Like, we have Rumble Cloud and we'll shut down people for illegal activity and stuff like that. So that happens all the time. But never have I seen somebody get shut down based on politics and based on, you know, the excuses they used were, in my opinion, like, manufactured because the,

You could apply that same excuse to Facebook or the same excuse to YouTube. And in fact, those companies had far more of that activity than Parlor did at the time. So it was a double standard at the time. They took away the fastest growing social network, which was Parlor. So we, a couple months later, when we took that investment in like April of 21, and the number one priority at that time was to build our own infrastructure. So we took that money and started building our own rails so that Rumble would never face that fate. We weren't using the cloud providers, so we already kind of were a lot safer.

But we still were leasing equipment from like IBM and other providers. We realized we needed to build our own cloud, have our own rail and not be dependent on anybody out there. And that's what we did. To be clear, you didn't have any political agenda at all, just being open. Just being fair, allowing people to speak freely about politics, speak freely about their, at that time, COVID was a big thing. Just be able to say what you could say at a dinner table. We didn't allow illegal activity or any of that. So the only thing that would dictate what dear or didn't make it on to rumble would be legality.

If it was illegal, you would shut it down. If it was legal, it was open. I would say it wasn't free, it's not free speech absolutist. we're a little bit like, I would say, if free speech absolutism is over here, we're like, you know, quite a bit away from that because like, you know, calling for violence and how you call for violence, any type of violence calling is inappropriate and not allowed on Rumble. So we don't allow spam. We don't allow pornography. Doxing, for example.

Yeah, doxing. So there's a lot of things that might, like, adult material is not illegal. We don't allow that on Rumble. So I wouldn't call us like free speech absolutists. How did you decide we won't have adult stuff, even if it's legal? So it wasn't a thoughtful decision at the time. When it happened, it was when we started Rumble in 2013. What happened is that Rumble didn't move its goalposts after we established its terms. What YouTube did, what Twitter at the time did, what Facebook did is they moved the goalposts every year. They moved it in one direction or the other.

They kept changing their terms of service. You know, you weren't allowed to talk about an election. You weren't allowed to talk about masks. You weren't allowed to talk about COVID. Rumble didn't make all these policy changes and start changing them based on, you know, public pressure and media pressure. We just stuck to exactly what we came up with in 2013, provided a very consistent terms of service and never moved. We haven't moved the goalposts for, not for the media and not for a government that's asked us to. And we've come under a lot of scrutiny because of that.

But ultimately, it's become like a very important thing for me and for our company. It's in our DNA to like not make the mistakes these other tech platforms have made. And to be very consistent to our user base and very fair to our user base. What do you think it was about you or your upbringing that allowed you to have that strength? It's a good question. I never thought about that, but with my parents for sure. Tell me about them. My parents, my grandparents, they're very, like, I don't know how to explain it, but they're just very good people. Like, never do something wrong, never, you know,

when you know you're doing something right, just stick to it. Like, don't let anybody influence you. Honorable? Would that be your word? Honorable? Absolutely. Yeah, my dad honors the perfect word for him. like stick to what's right all the time and never fall to peer pressure never allow someone to push you and to do something that you don't think is right you know that that's kind of gone down our entire company in the last five years we've had let me tell you the amount of media that's come after us the amount of twisted stories that have come after us and a lot of it malicious you know a lot of it probably just based on not knowing who we are and just making

assumptions. But yeah, we've gone through quite a bit. Like we've had governments turn us on. Well, we've turned off in France, in Brazil. France was an interesting one. Was France the first government interaction you had? I can't remember if it was Brazil or France. Actually, the first one, I think that banned Rumble was China. And I think that happened in 21. Rumble is global other than places that have banned you. Correct. So I don't know what came first, if it was France or Brazil. but both of them are super interesting. But the French one was they sent us a letter basically saying they're going to turn us off at the telco level unless we removed content that didn't violate our terms of service. Not illegal.

Not illegal. It was just in their views. It was during the Ukraine and Russia war. And they didn't want any kind of, I guess, Russian opinion on Rumble. And they told us to remove channels that were pro-Russian. on Rumble, and it didn't violate any of our terms of service. We're an American U.S. company and didn't violate any U.S. laws. And we said no. And they said, well, if you don't, you're going to be violating sanctions. So then we took the step to just turn off Rumble on our side and challenge them on court.

How do you do that? How can you turn off a country? There's just technology that allows us to turn it off. So we challenged them in court. And it's actually, what makes it really interesting is the media came after us saying that we're pro-Russian companies sticking up for Russia. It wasn't a year later where the Russians came to us and wanted us to remove some, I guess, anti-Russian content. And we took the same principles with the Russians. Yeah. We're not playing any sides.

It's not a side. It's just, you know, these are our terms of service. We're not going to censor somebody based on political beliefs. Like, you can't live in a proper democratic society or a good society. if you can't express your opinions. Yeah. So you're not a political actor at all. At all.

You're out of it. And then the Russians turn Rumble off at the IP level. So now Rumble's not accessible in Russia. Meanwhile, YouTube is. So clearly, I think YouTube might be off now, but at the time, YouTube was not. So at the time, maybe they were complying with the Russians. We weren't. So France turns us off because of Russia.

Russia turns us off because of their reasons, which I find really ironic. And only a month ago, we actually prevailed in court in France and we're back on in France now. Without changing anything. Without changing anything. We just beat them in the court, which to me was surprising. In the French court. In the French court. Yeah, we challenged them in France.

And the judge said that the person that sent us that letter, which was like a minister over there, didn't have the authority to do it. And it's invalid. So we're back on in France. And it's one small win, but it was a bigger win than that. It was like a real moral win because- Yeah, it's the principle. Yeah.

Fighting based on a principle and the principal won. I didn't think that we would win. Yeah. I thought the judges would just side with them. And to see that they sided on our side was like, it was really cool. It was like, we did something awesome. It gives you a feeling of possibility of hope.

Correct. Yeah, absolutely. And those are the type of wins that mean a lot to me. Like doing something like that costs a lot of money. It's, you know, we lost a lot of money. It was an ideological principle. approach, not based on business. If it was business, it would be immediately, let's shut this down and keep the market.

But in the long term, the principle is going to have a real benefit for your company. In the short term, it may have been a financial mistake. But in the long term, you have credibility for doing the right thing. Yeah. And I think that's kind of been why Rumble has done so well. over the years is that we've been so steadfast. Tell me the Brazil's story. So the Brazil story, actually it was not even politics.

It was a creator that the Supreme Court justice didn't like. They called him the Joe Rogan of Brazil. It was a creator named Monarch, and we got an order to remove the creator from Rumble, and we don't even know why. He didn't do anything illegal. This is like far beyond anything we've seen. And then we got orders to remove political people as well in Brazil.

You know, we did the same thing. We're not going to comply with this. This doesn't violate U.S. laws. This is like either it's political censorship with these creators or it's, we don't even know what the reason is for this creator. So we won't comply. If there's this content that violates our policies, please point us to it. So same procedure, challenge them in court and turn it off.

So shut down Brazil. And then this year in February, we get a notice saying, you can now release this creator. You can be on your platform, which was interesting. So we did. Four days later, we get a notice. Then we turn on Brazil. We go live in the entire country thinking is a big win. And then the Supreme Court Justice sends us a letter to censor this for different creators now.

I guess they found on other stuff on the Rumble they didn't like, very political. And then we said no again. And this time, we didn't shut down Brazil. And they ended up shutting us off at the ISP level. And we ended up litigating against them for various different reasons. But we did that in the United States court. And because we started litigating them, because they sent in order saying, we need to do this and we need to pay this fine. And we're like, this is invalid or a U.S. company.

And we went to the U.S. court. and we got the result we wanted at the U.S. court. We didn't have to comply with this order. And he ended up shutting us down completely and then naming me specifically as I'm trying to destabilize Brazil for doing absolutely nothing except challenge them in court.

I'm not even, according to the Supreme Court, in Brazil, you're not even allowed to challenge them in the Florida court. So it's been a really odd one. And then I think recently there were sanctions imposed on that Supreme Court justice in Brazil by the United States for the censorship and stuff that he's done to Rumble and X. That one's been a little bit more, a lot bigger of a story

just because he did it to X as well. He did it to Rumble asking for all this censorship. And Rumble did not comply. I believe X did comply, though. So it was a little bit different. X didn't comply for a month, and then they ended up paying the fines and complying, whereas we didn't at all.

now we're shut off and continue to be shut off. And do you think that's something that eventually will work itself out? I think so. But usually over time the truth wants to come out. Yeah. And the problem there is a little bit different. We're talking to the Supreme Court justice. When you look at laws in the way the United States justice system works, if we have a

problem in the United States, we take it to court. And it goes up the court. It can go all the way to the Supreme Court if you disagree on appeal, on appeal. and you get to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court makes a decision and that becomes the law of the land. What the Brazilian Supreme Court justice was, he was not waiting for anybody to take it to the courts.

He just created his own order at the very top and said, Rumble's not allowed to do this. That's like unheard of in law. We've never seen anything like that in America. And it's definitely not the process in Brazil. So now you're on everywhere in the world except China, Russia, and Brazil? Correct.

Yeah. It's a big world. That's great. Yeah, no, it's the France win was a big one, big moral victory for us. When that happened, did it help growth in Europe in general when you came back in France? It's still early to say. This just happened like a month ago. Oh, really?

Yeah, it's, and a lot of people in France probably are not even aware that that order has been reversed and now we're there. So it's going to take some time to see that. Do you do any kind of advertising or promotion outside of Rumble itself? Absolutely. And we're going to do that a lot in 26. We're going to go very international for the very first time. We've been very isolated to the United States just because we've been working hard at making the platform better and doing a lot of things better. We haven't had the time to kind of really crow rumble internationally. But that is a huge focus for us. As nutrition science advanced through the mid-20th century, researchers began to understand that modern eating patterns, limited variety, process. foods and time constraints could leave small but meaningful gaps in daily micronutrient intake. Today, large population studies confirm that approximately 90% of adults fall short on one or more essential vitamins or minerals. Ag1 was formulated in response to those findings. Each daily

serving provides more than 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source nutrients, including vitamins A, C, E, B6, B12, magnesium, zinc, selenium, and iodine. A scientifically developed formula backed by nutrition research and delivered informs the body can readily access. Because utilization depends on absorption, AG1 also contains probiotics to support gut health and digestive function, helping the body make effective use of what it receives. AG1 contains no gluten or dairy, uses no genetically modified ingredients, or artificial sweeteners,

and is suitable for a wide range of dietary approaches, including plant-based, paleo, keto, and low-carbohydrate diets. Available in single-serving packets for when you're on the goal, manufactured under strict quality controls, every batch of AG1 is tested to confirm its composition, nutrient levels, and the absence of contaminants, ensuring reliability from one serving to the next. It's no wonder AG1 is trusted by the world's top athletes and experts. What was once a futuristic concept? Daily nutritional support in a glass is now the result of applied science. Learn more at drinkag1.com slash tetra. Do it today. From 2020 to now, how much has Rumble grown?

So we reported 47 million monthly active users in the last quarter that we reported. So that's up, you know, 47 times since 2020. Wow. It's been... Huge. Yeah, it's been massive. And would you say that the content is across the board now? More so, it's getting there.

We're doing a real big effort to diversify the content in the last two years. And we've done a pretty good job on that. And I think, like, you know, since the elections in 2024, the political content is, it's still extremely popular. You know, Rumble does really well on days of news events. But it's been a huge, huge move for us to try to be more than just politics and really touch on to different things. I hope so because the purpose of it was never political. Never, yeah. No, it was just people making cool stuff.

Yeah. And, you know, we brought on like street league skateboarding. We have that now exclusively on Rumble. So we got some cool sporting stuff on Rumble. Seems like comedy would be a really good area. Yeah, I agree. I think comedy would be, that's a great category for Rommel. That's, it's something that we're talking about internally how to do that.

A lot of these guys have built huge audiences on YouTube. So we have to find ways to entice them to bring their huge audiences onto Rumble. That's the barrier we have to overcome. and there's like a monetization barrier, so we have to deal with that. How does monetization work on Rumble versus YouTube or anywhere else? So YouTube's monetization is basically pre-roll ads. So you turn on a video and you get like a 30-second commercial

or a 10-second commercial before the video starts. Is that sold by YouTube? Yes. So Rumble does the exact same thing on that as well. The other way that they monetize, is through, you can tip a creator. So if you're doing like a live stream, you can tip. We have that same feature.

On Rumble, you have live streams as well as pre-made videos. Yes, exactly. So you can do VOD or you can do live streaming. So on VOD, it's all programmatic advertising, which are those commercials. On live streaming, it's, you know, programmatic advertising and tipping. And you can also subscribe to a creator for exclusive content on Rumble with YouTube. you can do something similar. The one thing where we have a competitive advantage against YouTube,

which is just, you know, it's being released imminently. It's out on Android. It's out on iOS right now as well. And it's in beta is the Rumble wallet. So you can also tip creators in Bitcoin or Stablecoin as well. How did that come to be? We took in a really large investment from Tether. It closed the deal in February of 25 this year for $775 million.

So they invested in Rumble and obviously they're the world's largest stable coin, Tether, USDT, and they're a huge Bitcoin people. And so am I. We actually, you know, we hold Bitcoin at Rumble and we held it even prior to me even knowing the Tether guys. So it's something we always wanted to do, especially now that with the new administration being a lot more pro-crypto and pro-Bitcoin, we felt like this was an opportunity for us to be a first mover and allowing creators to and users.

to tip creators with Bitcoin. So we've been working on that all year, and it's now in beta on iOS and Android. And I'm really looking forward to, you know, launching this big time in 26. How is the experience of Rumble different on the website versus the app? All the same features on the web, on the app, primarily. Are you on Apple TV as well?

Yeah. So you can watch the podcasts on Apple TV, Roku, Samsung, LG, Xbox. Do you know what percentage is on the phone versus the laptop versus screaming on television? Yeah, we do. So when you look at a phone, I guess like a lot of people will still use their phone in a browser. That's pretty popular. A desktop is like, you know, it's a much smaller percentage. TV is like the growing medium right now. So a lot of people are taking these podcasts on Rumble and watching them on on their TVs now. That's becoming like a thing. And what we're noticing is a lot of people are taking their podcasts, they're converting them to a live show where they can interact with the audience and actually take questions from the audience through the chats. So you're seeing podcasts kind of transform into a live stream and you're seeing these live stream podcasts now being streamed on the big screen. On the live streams, if you go to the app, are all the live streams in one place? Can you see this is all happening now?

Yes. Yeah. It's different than your typical TV listings where you have channels, like channel numbers. Here you have like, you know, organization by based on like how many people are watching, how many people are chatting, et cetera. So it's similar. I actually see the world moving, you know, we have cable TV, which is live. I see that moving to over the top, internet-based TV.

And I really see like independent creators kind of. this is like five years, 10 years down the road, kind of dominating the most of the consumption for big screen TVs. So like a show like this will, you know, can be live on someone's TV and someone can tune into it whenever you go live. And I think that's where the market's going to move. What's the advantage of live versus recorded? The ability to interact with your audience. And it's the same for TV. If you look at like, you know, CNN or Fox, they're live. The idea of being live is just the audience likes it better. But the real advantage here is that when it comes to live streaming like on Rumble or YouTube or any of these other platforms,

it's now become like a community where the person that subscribes to you can now like chat, post questions, you can choose to knowledge them or not, you can choose to interact with them. You now have a two-way relationship with your audience in real time with your guests or whatever your show might be. So to me it's like the next iteration. It's almost like moving web 1.0 to web 2.0, which was, you know, these flat web pages of information to now like social networks. It's like live stream. It's like consumption of video web 1.0 to consumption of video web 2.0 where you now have a two way interaction with audience and talent. And I think that brings talent and audience a lot closer and really builds incredible communities. And that's kind of where I see it all going. I see your typical

ABC networks, you know, your Fox networks, these big networks that are on television, I see platforms kind of being their own networks, whether it's going to be Netflix, YouTube, Rumble, Twitch. They're all going to have like their own collection of content. collection of streamers and you're going to tune into each platform the way you kind of tune into like the CBS or ABC networks. That's kind of how I see it transforming in the next five to 10 years. How would you compare Rumble to Twitch? Twitch is entirely a live streaming platform where Rumble is more than just live streaming. Rumble's like YouTube. It has live streaming. It has VOD. What percentage of people are watching live stream versus watching VOD?

The VOD is still the largest component of Rumble. And on YouTube as well, I imagine. Yeah, absolutely. The live streaming component, it's more like a forward-thinking future type of where we think the market's going to go. Now, if you do a live stream afterwards, it becomes a VOD piece. Exactly. So you don't have to watch it when it's happening. You could still watch it after.

Exactly. And that's why a lot of people like that. It's like, you know, you're basically getting all the work done in the live stream for your VOD. the same time. And it all automatically converts when it's done. And it's, you know, a lot of people watch it three, four days later. From the beginning, did you think of Rumble as a niche product, or did you think of it as it's going to be YouTube? It's going to be YouTube. That's amazing. Since day one. That was, you know, no question about that. That was always the target. You know, I didn't see the world go the way it was going to go in terms of like seeing all the platforms kind

give away the market. We're all in the middle. We all have the same terms of service. You name it, Snapchat, Twitter, X now, YouTube, Facebook. They all have relatively similar terms of service. And then everybody started picking sides, like right away. And we just sat in the middle. And all of a sudden from a very crowded place in the middle, it became empty. And the market just came to us. It wasn't because we went to that. We just stayed in the same spot. We didn't change anything. And now they're all kind of changing. back and like YouTube announced I guess like a couple months ago that they're now you can talk about elections again you can talk about whatever you want and they're going to move towards free speech

and they're going to bring everyone back and Facebook did that a year ago and Elon did that with X like a couple of years ago so it's all coming back to where we were which is great there was a moment in time where it was very lonely it was just us and it seems like that's a pendulum that might keep swinging absolutely there's a great advantage to you staying in the center. And, you know, it's, it's going to be funny because, like, one day you're perceived as one type of politics, but the next day you could be perceived with the other type of politics, but really, you just, you haven't moved. And I think you kind of see that

over history. Like, depending on the decade, there's certain parties are more for free speech, pro-free speech than other parties. So it changes. Free speech is not stagnant. That's for sure. It's, it's politically agnostic. And anyone, can say anything. To a certain extent. Yeah. To the legal extent. Yeah.

Within the bounds of our terms of service. But you're exactly right. It's politically agnostic. It's not to be one way or the other. We want to be a place where you can speak freely where we're not telling you what you can or cannot say or you can or cannot hear. We want you to be able to express yourself the way you've been able to express yourself at your dinner table.

And it's user generated. Everyone has opinions. So it's not representing anything other than the creator. Correct. It doesn't stand for anything. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny because the media would associate a specific creator out of the millions that will be on your platform,

they'll associate that creator to represent the views of the platform. And that's just preposterous. It's like, but that's what happened in the last five years. And, you know, I think that kind of getting thrusted into the world of politics and seeing how the media would play that game. That was probably the biggest disheartening thing. It kind of gave me a little bit more skin because you see how evil that is.

What was the first time the media came after you? Oh, yeah. Okay, so this was a good one. So it was 2020. You're going to like this story. This is a good story. I don't think I've talked about this story publicly before. It was BuzzFeed in 2020 around the election.

like a week before the 2020 elections, and it was in the middle of COVID, and an editor from BuzzFeed wanted to interview me. And I've had no experience with the media. This is like Rumble kind of growing in this direction that was incredible, but like I had zero experience with media, zero experience of politics. I was excited that BuzzFeed wasn't talking to.

I was excited. I'm like, all right, we're going to get an interview. This is pretty cool. Yeah. And it's in Toronto and it's in COVID and he says, let's meet. And, you know, we end up meeting in the Rumble offices, which at the time are closed because it's peak COVID, but, you know, we decided to meet. He wanted to meet in person. And we met in person.

And he starts interviewing me, you know, started off great. It seemed like a good interview. And he starts asking me some questions. And I feel like it's going in this awkward direction all of a sudden. So a little background before I get into it because it's very relevant. My parents were born in a country called Macedonia. Where is that? That's north of Greece.

North of Greece. Close to Turkey? Between Serbia and Greece. And like right beside between Bulgaria, Albania, Greece and Serbia and Kosovo. It's a little country. It was part of the former Yugoslavia. So that's where my parents were born. They immigrated to Canada.

they're back in the 70s. I was born in Toronto. And your parents moved. Did they already speak English? Probably not. My mom moved first to Australia and then from Australia she came to Toronto. And my dad moved, you know, in his teenagers with his parents and straight to Toronto. Why did they decide to move?

At the time, they, looking for a better life. It was communist Yugoslavia at the time. And their parents felt like they could find a better life in Canada. Could they leave or was it hard to leave? I don't think it was hard to leave. I'm not sure exactly how they managed that, but I don't think it was difficult. So they came, I come from immigrants,

immigrant parents that came from Macedonia. So I'm in this interview with BuzzFeed. And then he mentions to me, so I was the reporter about the fake news farms in Macedonia. And I was like fake news farms in Macedonia. What? what? What does that have to do with me? And he's like, I couldn't help but notice that you have parents that are from Macedonia. And I'm like, I'm sitting there in shock. I'm like,

okay, there's lots of Macedonians. What does this have to do with me? And he's like, well, they helped fix the election in 2016 with Trump and Hillary Clinton or whatever. And he starts asking me these questions. And I'm sitting there. And I'm like, I had like a tear in my eye. Like, I couldn't believe this was happening. Like, if someone, like, comes from a nation where there was a terrorist attack, are you going to ask them if they're part, like, this is so discriminatory? Why are you asking me this question? It was so shocking.

I remember I had, I had, like, tears in my eye, like, in this interview, in complete shock of what was going on. I go, this is, like, absolutely inappropriate. This is completely discriminatory. Yes, my parents came from Macedonia. and no, I have nothing to do with anything that you're talking about, nor do I have any knowledgeable what you're even talking about. I'm like, this is ridiculous that you're even asking me this.

And he got really, I think he felt really bad when I said that, as he should. And that was my first instance with the media. And I never felt like something so evil that you would discriminate against me from just from where my parents, It almost made me, like, embarrassed to say, like, should I be embarrassed to say that my parents came from Macedonia? Is that where you're like, it was really, really gross? And that was my first instance with the media. And I could, I put bad taste in my mouth forever.

Did the story talk about that at all? They touched on it very little. He's like, I must put it in. And I'm like, why does that have any relevance to this story whatsoever? So they didn't really talk about it much, but they added in a line or two that, He's from Macedonia, and of course, they had to put, Macedonia was a place where fake news, like, it was just so wrong. It was, from there on, I never took an interview from what I thought would be a hostile,

potentially hostile. But going in, you didn't think it was going to be hostile. There would be no reason to think there'd be any hostility. I'm a Canadian guy in Toronto. Like, why is this happening? They're just looking for dirt, you know? They're looking for that headline, and they want to put that head. out there to get more clicks or something.

But that was a real eye-opener. It was really gross. Since then, how has Rumble been smeared? Well, the Russia stuff with France, you know, every single major news, Politico, everybody covered the Russia thing with France. And then when Russia banned Rumble, they didn't cover it.

Amazing. That seems part for the course for the media. I think that was like one of my biggest learning experiences is just like seeing the corporate media and how agenda driven they are. And they're just, they're trying to get to the answer they want rather than trying to, you know, figure out what the reality really is. They have an agenda.

They have an answer they want to get to. And they're going to do whatever it takes to get to that answer to feed an agenda. And it's not what the media should be. And that's exactly why, like, you know, podcasts like this and shows on Rumble are doing so well because it's just independent thought with no agenda, no corporate agenda behind it, telling them what they should be asking and what they should be saying.

And I think that's why this medium is growing so much and why it will continue to grow in the decades to come. Have you dealt with any censorship in the United States? We dealt with a few things, one in California, one in New York, that we've challenged in the courts and we've succeeded on both of them. What were they? So the one in New York was, at the time, Attorney General of New York, I think Letitia James,

wanted to create like this moderation thing where I don't know the exact details of it. I can't remember this. A couple of years ago. But it was basically some type of, it was something that violated the First Amendment. And the one thing that's been amazing about America is like the judges here in the judicial system values the First Amendment. and like we've been prevailing on anything when it comes to the First Amendment here. So we don't have that type of issue. Like I've never dealt with like outside of obviously the companies in America that are

they've been censoring for the last five years. But you had been attacked. Yeah. So when it comes to the corporate America, remember I was telling you how we were building our infrastructure? Yeah. So on July 4th, I remember it because it was July 4th. Yeah. Independence Day.

Yeah. It was, I think it was a day before Independence Day. that we got a notice from one of our providers that they were going to shut everything down on July 3rd, that they're going to shut everything down in 24 hours because they didn't want to host anything to do with Rumble. And our team, which has been building the infrastructure behind the scenes at lightning speeds,

were forced to move everything early onto the infrastructure. And they did within 24 hours notice. So you didn't miss a beat. We didn't miss a beat. And I remember being like, wow. That's awesome. On Independence Day, we achieved one of the would have been a catastrophic problem where Rumble would be shut down across the world.

Did they tell you why they wanted to shut you down? It was, I think it was related to this Russia war. They want specific content to be off. So now are you totally independent in that way? Oh, yeah. When Facebook goes down or Amazon goes down, we're humming. We're alive. Congratulations.

It's the coolest thing. It's when you see that we're running completely on our own rail and completely independent from any type of, I guess, you know, competition from- And no corporate interference. Yeah. And that's really, that was the big fear. Yeah.

Was the corporate interference. And where those guys get their marching orders to do what they do? We didn't violate any of their policies. Not even their own policies were violated. But they make a decision. up at top saying these guys got to go. That's wild. Yep.

L M-N-T. Element Electrolites. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? Do you want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add element electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function.

Experience an increase in steady energy with fewer headaches and fewer muscle cramps. Element electrolytes. Drink it in the sauna. Refreshing flavors include grapefruit, citrus, watermelon, and chocolate salt. Formulated with the perfect balance of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to keep you hydrated and energized throughout the day. These minerals help conduct the electricity that powers your nervous system so you can perform at your your very best. Element electrolytes are sugar-free, keto-friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life.

So visit drinklm-n-tie.com slash tetra. And stay salty with element electrolytes, L-M-N-T. For people who have not built their own infrastructure, is there a way that they can find safe haven? depending on the year. That's probably the best way to answer that. I think it depends on the year. It depends on the political environment.

But ultimately, if you become really, really large and there's a government out there that doesn't like what you're saying on it about their government, you're not going to survive. It's that simple. We've gotten censorship orders from New Zealand, Australia, India, Brazil, France, China, Russia.

And we even had one in the UK. They wanted us, a UK parliamentary member, or I can't remember exactly who sent us the letter, but they wanted us to take down Russell Brand, not for the content that he posted on Rumble because they didn't like who he was. It had nothing to do with the content on Rumble, but they wanted us to remove.

Well, they tell you it has nothing to do with the content. content. It's impossible to know. Correct. Yeah, they were, they were just, and we, we stood against them and we went public with the letter and we said, no way. You're going to have to shut us down first. So now you're on in the UK. Yeah, we're still on in the UK. Yeah, they didn't follow through and it was just a threat. And a lot of them are, like the New Zealand one was a threat. The Australian one was a threat. The UK one was clearly a threat. they didn't follow through on. But it just shows that like we're that close to them taking away what I regard as the most basic human right, the ability to speak freely, the ability to give

your opinion. If you can't give your opinion and you can't speak freely, what society do you live in? That is like the most fundamental human right. Everyone talks about human rights. This is one of the most fundamental. Basic. Basic. Absolutely basic. It's something that people have fought for for, you know, thousands of years, no matter where you are, you want to have a voice.

And when you take away someone's voice and you take away everyone's voice, you know, that's what creates really big problems in the world. Where on the planet is Rumble most popular? United States of America. And after that? I would say Canada and the UK would be the next two. And are there any places where you see big potential growth? Yeah.

So our focus in 26 is going to be international. We see a lot of potential in South America, a lot of potential in India. We think India is a very large market, and it's one that we want to pursue because there's a little bit of English overlap there. So it'll be a little bit easier for us. And then we just launched Spanish language Rumble in the last month. So as we get more global, you know, that'll take away that political perception. as well. So when you go international in each country, you can be in the language of that country using AI. Yeah. So I think we're doing it a little differently when we're entering these countries now,

but as AI gets smarter and gets better, we're going to have a ton of options. We just acquired a company in Europe and Germany. We announced this about a month ago that has the largest GPU state, one of the largest GPU states in Europe. GPUs are the hardware behind. AI. So basically a GPU, an AI infrastructure company is what we acquired in Europe. So this is a big, big initiative internally for us. This will attach to our cloud business that we've built, this AI infrastructure company. Tell me about the cloud business. So we built that Rumble cloud business because it was existential for Rumble to survive as we spoke about on that July 4th day. But you've opened it up beyond just your use.

Correct. Now it's open to the public as of last year. And we are now hosting more than just Rumble. We're hosting the Miami Dolphins. We're hosting the Tampa Bay Bucking. So you're competing with the other big cloud services. Exactly. Our goal is not only to compete with them, compete with Google on video,

but to compete with them on cloud as well. And the reason why we got into the cloud business is obviously it was because it's existential. But the other reason why is that when you own a very large video property, like Google owns YouTube or like Amazon Oads, Twitch, you have a lot of capacity of storage, a lot of capacity for bandwidth, a lot of capacity for processing power. For example, Rumble represented 17% of the U.S. streaming market according to stream charts on the 2024 11, election night, presidential elections. That's huge. Huge. YouTube was like 60, 70%, 20%, Twitch was like 10.

Rumble was like 17, 18% that night. And we're not 17, 18% of the U.S. streaming market every day. That was just on election night. So you have all this excess capacity that's not being used every other day. And if we hosted, if we got to 17% on election night, we'll probably have a little bit more. Yeah. And so we have all this extra capacity that we're not using. And so does Google.

And so does Twitch. and that enables us to go into the cloud market with tons of capacity and be able to sell that with really high margin. So not only was it existential for Rumble to have it and defend itself, but it's also we can be very competitive with the Googles and the Amazon's because of the excess capacity that we have because of Rumble, as Rumble being the main tenant. And price-wise, can you compete with them?

Yeah, because we have this capacity, whether we're using it or not. So essentially the margin is huge. That's why we got into the business. And then more recently, about a month ago, we said we had processing power. We have compute. We have storage. We have Kubernetes. What we just brought, what we're bringing in with this acquisition in Europe is AI, GPU as a service, data centers.

They own a lot of data centers. They have a lot of power. They have really good assets. So we're bringing in a very large asset base, one of the largest GPU estates in Europe. So that also helps us go international because we've been very, very here in America mostly. But that, you know, takes us the next step. And also fortifies us as well as a company. So pretty excited about that. And to go to your AI point, you know, that AI resource now that we'll have is going to be critical in making Rumble better, making our ads better for our advertisers,

and really kind of taking Rumble to the next level as well. both internationally language languages, tools to help creators monetize better, help them do things easier, et cetera. So YouTube sells ads that are pre-roll, and now you guys also sell ads? Yes. How does that work? So the way I like to look at Rumble is that we have a bunch of pillars of business.

We have the video business. We have the advertising business, so pillar one video, Pillar 2, advertising. So the Rumble advertising centers where advertisers can go in, purchase ads with their favorite creators, purchase ads across the platform, and they can purchase ads even outside of the Rumble ecosystem.

So it's a whole exchange where you can buy ads and spend money. We have another pillar, which is the payments. How big of a staff do you have on the advertising side? We've just under 300 for the whole company. And I think the advertising side is probably close to 50. the other pillar that we have is payments, which is the wallet that we're launching,

that's in beta that I spoke about. And then the fourth pillar would be cloud. And then our fifth pillar is the data centers with this acquisition that we're making. So those are the five pillars of business that we're focused on. The whole vision is to basically create a freedom-first technology infrastructure

across all these pillars where everything is built around the ethos of freedom. freedom of speech, freedom to transact, freedom of reach, freedom to build on a cloud that's not going to interfere based on anything that you do. We believe that everything that we do online in the next 10 to 20 years, everything you do on your phone should be built in a way that you own as the creator owns it, as the user should own it. The user should have privacy around it. They should have the ability to do what they want with it, and it should be decentralized. So the whole ecosystem that we're building is going to be based on the principles of everything

around freedom first. And eventually we're going to have a freedom first AI. We think your AI should also be your AI, not controlled by a corporate entity. The only place we play in is will be your infrastructure, will be your resource if you need more compute power. If you need more hardware, we'll play in as the resource for the. that. So we're really, really, I'm really bullish on the idea that everything will go towards the ability for people to own their own software, have their privacy, and be able to say

whatever they want to say with their own applications. I remember a few years ago in Canada, there was the issue with the Canadian truckers. Do you remember the story? Oh yeah. Very well, very well. And they were smeared, they were removed from social media, they were debanked, people who donated to them, the money was stolen. Do you see a world where Rumble fixes that problem? That's what we're trying to fix. When you really look at the tech stack that we're building, the goal is to make sure that your money is untouchable. We're launching a non-custodial wallet. We can't even touch it. The Rumble wallet, we can't even take the money out of it. It's not even technically feasible for us to do it. So it's a non-custodial.

wallet. You have a platform where we're allowing you to speak completely freely without, you know, telling you what you can or cannot say or can or cannot hear. That is exactly what I think most of the world is striving for. They're striving for that independence, that resilience, that privacy, that freedom. Freedom is something that we've all pursued for thousands of years, every generation. Like, wars have happened based on fighting for freedom. Like, that's, something that is engraved in us as humans. We want that freedom. And I think that right now, all the companies that are out there, all the big corporate technology companies, they control the application layer, they are biased, they don't want you to own your own AI, they want to

monetize every part of you, you're now the product for them. We want to flip that on its head. I want to be the resource for you if you need it, and I want to give the application layer for you where you can control it and you can have your own privacy. I think there's a market for that. I know there's a market for that. That's why Rumble exists today. Rumble has 47 million monthly active users, most of which are here in America, and we haven't even touched the surface internationally yet.

And when you put that in perspective, like 30 to 40 million in U.S. and Canada for us, X has, the last time they reported, it was 67 million in the U.S. YouTube's 200 million in the U.S. So it's a big number. It's a big number. It's not a small number. We don't have two billion worldwide, but we haven't tried yet. So as we try next year, you know, that's, there's a lot of headroom for us to grow there.

But even now YouTube is less than 10 times as big? They're 2 billion internationally, 2.2 or something. In the U.S. In the U.S. In the U.S. Less than 10 times, yes. Yeah. In the U.S.

So you know it's possible. That's within striking distance. Yeah, absolutely. We're close. And on election night, we're, you know, not far at all, actually. Yeah. We're their only competition on election night. So the appetite for what we're building is there.

And I think that it doesn't just exist for video. It exists for all your applications. If you could walk me through the trucker situation, what was taken from those people and how would, in this new Rumble ecosystem, protect those people. So number one, the truckers, they were voicing their opinion by protesting physically online during nonviolent protests. No, they were playing hockey on the streets. They're honking their horns. It was absolutely nonviolent. It was like a party, if anything. And it was all

over Canada, but most particularly in the capital, Ottawa. But the parties were in, we're in Toronto. They were everywhere. You walk the streets. You'd see it. And they just were voicing their opinion around COVID at the time. And they didn't want forced vaccines. And the problem here is, and this is why Rumble fixes all this, is that, number one, you couldn't even voice these opinions or even show what's happening on the streets, these peaceful protests on YouTube. They were getting banned because I'm sure the Canadian government was putting pressure on YouTube

to remove content. And Rumble was the opposite. Rumble was like, you know, this doesn't violate her terms of service to play hockey on the streets of Toronto. And if someone wants to make a video arguing the opposite side, that would be there too. Absolutely. Let the best argument win. You're not on any side. No, exactly. No side whatsoever. So you could broadcast these protests on Rumble, whereas on YouTube, you might not be allowed to say that the COVID shot, I don't want to have it.

one, you give the ability for freedom of speech to all those truckers. That's one thing that we do better than our competition at the time. But the truckers were fighting for other things, too. They were getting their banks shut down. So Rumble Wallet would defend that. If you had your money in Rumble Wallet, government in Canada can't shut that down. That's untouchable. It's on the blockchain. It's decentralized. So Rumble Wallet would fix that as well. So you give them freedom of speech. You give them freedom of finance. Those are the two pillars that you would really be able to. able to fix with Rumble in that situation. But ultimately, I think if a company like Rumble becomes very big that's based on this principles, then governments have harder time opposing that as well. I also think like if more companies did what we did, governments wouldn't be able to do what they did at the truckers. And that's like kind of the sad part is that all these companies folded. Every single one of them folded. They all took orders from the government, regardless of their principles, whether they agreed with them or disagreed with them. They just took the orders and they censored and they shut everybody down. They shut down the bank accounts. Probably had a fear. It's scary

to go up against the government. It is. But we did. We did it in France. We did it in Brazil. Yeah. I'm not as big as Mark Zuckerberg or any of these other guys. I'm not even a fraction of them. But I still told them to go pound sand just based on a principle. It was pretty easy. Like, it was the right thing to do. I'm surprised they all folded. It's shocking to me how weak everyone was. So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy using one of Squarespace's best-in-class templates. With the built-in-stander. style kit, you can change fonts, imagery, margins, and menus.

So your design will be perfectly tailored to your needs. Discover unbreakable creativity with fluid engine, a highly intuitive drag-and-drop editor. No coding or technical experience is required. Understand your site's performance with in-depth website analytics tools. Squarespace has everything you need to succeed online. Create a blog. Monetize a newsletter.

Make a marketing portfolio. Launch an online store. The Squarespace app helps you run your business from anywhere. Track inventory and connect with customers while you're on the go. Whether you're just starting out or already managing a successful brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create and customize a beautiful website. Visit Squarespace. dot com slash tetra and get started today how much of the internet is free and fair now not much and it's going to get

worse it's going to get way worse with AI wasn't that the whole idea of the internet originally that's a free and open internet is the whole premise of it it's the whole point with AI it's going to go completely opposite how do you see that playing out. So one form of censorship was to just shut people off and know that they were shut off. That's what happened in 2020, in 2021, 2022. It was so easy to see. Everybody knew it. With AI, you're not going to know it. They don't need to shut you off anymore. They don't need to suspend your account or take your account away. They need to make it look like the people that are looking to see if you're still there, it shows up. And the people that were never looking to, for you and you never see it. And I believe that's already started. I believe that AI will take

censorship to a level we have never seen and it'll be almost impossible to figure it out. Wow. And that's like the scary part because you'll start believing narratives that might not be popular, but AI will make it appear popular. That gets into a really scary territory. I think that we're going to have to be very aware, very cognizant, that this could be a very big possibility. It really undermines the whole promise of AI. The whole basis of AI is that it can look at all the information that exists and make decisions even better than humans. That's the idea. Yep. So if the humans in any way put the thumb on the scale of AI in any way, it totally negates the whole benefit of it. Absolutely. And the worst part is that we've already seen humans put the thumbs on

their scale. It's just human nature. They all do. Imagine they know they can do it without you knowing they're doing it. I just don't see a world in which they don't do that. They're going to do that. I think they'll all do it. And I think that creates the opportunity for us. Are you building your AI from the ground up? So we first you need the resources and the hardware to be will do that. That's why we did this acquisition. And then our big investors, which are the stable coin tether, are building something like this right now. We're partnered up with them to do that as well. And the whole idea is going to be basically for us to deliver an AI that you own, that you control and you control its outcomes where we don't really have the say on that.

And I think that's where this is going to go. And that's where we're going to take it because you can't trust us to control your AI. So it won't be built on top of any existing AI system? So the way that in which Tether is looking at, it's called QVAC. And the overarching idea is that it'll be a model that's built on you, not built on the preferences of us. So I want to say we're early days for AI, but I think we're definitely early days in mapping this out and doing it the right way. But this is something that I think will be a very big opportunity for Rumble because I don't imagine any AI not being biased. I don't care who does it.

If it's being controlled, if the model is being built, that model is not open source and you can't see or someone can't investigate what it's doing, then I don't think you can trust it. And the one you're building will be open source. Yeah, the one, whatever we do, it'll be done in a way where everyone can see it, and you'll be building it on your own device, and it'll be held on your own device, and it'll be independent and differently than the one I have in mind. And that's kind of the principle of where we want to take it, and no one's doing that yet, and we want to be the first ones to do that. Tell me about the decision to go public.

So we went public in 2022. The one thing about Rumble is the people love Rumble. It's unbelievable how much recognition we get and how much love we get. The investment community and the corporate community do not like Rumble. We're disrupting everything for them, especially the corporate media, as we discussed. So outside of like a very few investors, the interest to invest in Rumble was not something that any major investor wanted to do. In fact, when we went and looked for a vehicle to go public, no one wanted to work with us. The only one that wanted to work with us was Howard Lutnik. That was the only guy,

who's now the Secretary of Commerce, and he helped us take us public. And we went public, and the reason why we went public is we knew there was a real appetite with the people to do what we're doing, building something based on freedom of speech. So we took it public, at a $2 billion valuation back in 2022. And it was the most successful SPAC at the time in that year when SPACs were like, you know, not doing well at all. We had less than 0.1% redemptions or something like that. It was incredible. So it was super successful.

And the, even until now, like the majority of the people that own Rumble are the retail or the people, the people that use the platform. We don't have huge institutions coming in and buying huge chunks of our stock and trying to influence our board. And we have the people that own us. And the people are like fully aligned with the mission that we have. And it's very ideological in the sense for free speech. Yeah. And the human right of freedom of expression. And, you know, most people wouldn't go public.

But for me, I think that was definitely the right choice at the right time. How has it been so far since that decision? It's been amazing. Everyone says going public is tough and maybe you don't want to go public, but it's kind of fun when you have the people behind you and the people that are the owners. It keeps you in check because you know you're always doing the right thing and you have to do the right thing because the people that own your company and your shareholders want you to do the right thing.

They're in it for obviously they want to see a very successful company, but they're also in it because of our mission and what we do. And the mission is clear to everyone. The people who are investing in it invest in it because of what it is, not in spite of what it is. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And that's why the institutions may stay away from it.

And maybe you want them to. Possibly, yeah. And, you know, I think times are changing now because freedom expression is a little cooler than it was three years ago. So, you know, we're seeing a little bit more interest. It's not as taboo as it was. So times are changing a little bit for sure. Where does Vimeo fit into the ecosystem of YouTube Rumble in the video wars? You know, there's actually a cool story behind that.

Vimeo was started by the college humor guys. So remember I was talking about EBOM's World and all those video sites way, way back? Yeah. So it was started by like three guys. They started Vimeo after college humor to compete against YouTube. And they did very well. And then obviously that became not so well once YouTube started getting integrated into Google search. And it became more difficult for everybody.

But when I started Rumble, one of the shareholders was the founder of Vimeo. Believe it or not, he's no longer in it. But he was part of Rumble. Josh Ambrison was one of the very first shareholders of Rumble. And what's the status of Vimeo today? I think they just got purchased by, I can't remember the name. They just got purchased by somebody,

I think an Italian company, but they're more like an enterprise product now. They're not in the same space that Rumble or YouTube is. They've completely pivoted to the enterprise world. Who are the biggest creators on Rumble today? The biggest creator on Rumble today is currently active

is Stephen Crowder in terms of, like the amount of live streams that he's doing. His live stream numbers are consistently the highest every day. The biggest creator on Rumble, though, by subscribers, but he's no longer on the platform today, is Dan Bongino. He's the deputy director of the FBI. So he left his podcast to go become the deputy director of the FBI, which he just announced prior to coming here that he's going to be finishing with the FBI in January. So he'll be back? I'm hoping he's back. He was actually the large. He was actually the large.

largest live streamer in America every single day in 2024. Wow. Yeah, he was doing. Across any platform. Across all platforms, we had the largest live streamer and perhaps in the world on most days as well, a lot of the days as well, but definitely in America, the largest live streamer doing like 160,000 people live, millions of views a day, one of the most influential conservative podcasters in the world in terms of views.

Has anyone left Rumble? Yeah, for sure. And why would anybody leave? Contracts from other companies, money. It's usually us fighting for talent and, you know, doing deals. For example, Joe Rogan, he's on Spotify. He was never on Rumble, but that's an example of someone doing a huge contract to make sure he only stays on Spotify.

So we do that too. We have contracts with like Tim Poole was huge. Stephen Crowder. So Tim Poole's on Rumble, but he's not on YouTube? He's on YouTube as well, but he's an exclusive show on Rumble as well at noon. So we buy content from creators to be exclusive and bring their audiences over to the platform. Tell me about music on Rumble. So in 23, 2023, where we actually got the most traction outside of the political sphere was with hip-hop commentators, hip-hop artists.

So one of the largest commentators out there, this guy named him. academics who I guess reports on the hip-hop world came to rumble so we saw we saw like a really interesting overlap with free speech and hip-hop it became so popular in rumble and the academics is still on rumble actually he's probably one of the more popular non-political creators on rumble that it became so popular that the rolling stone wrote an article how hip-hop is turning right because they're going to rumble right wing it has nothing to do with nothing to do it with politics, exactly. But you can search this article as funniest headline, but basically guys like DJ academics are huge influencers in the hip-hop space talking about all the hip-hop artists

and brought his show to rumble. And simply because he believed in free speech. And a lot of the hip-hop artists believe in free speech. It's actually something that they are very, very, very keen on. And we saw tons of overlap and growth in that and that hip-hop. And that hip-hop. segment. That was one segment that was one of the most easiest for Rumble to grow outside of the political world was hip-hop. And it had nothing to do with politics, just simply their desire for freedom of expression. Have there been any technological breakthroughs from the early days to now that have like changed everything or made it much easier? Or for example, the size of video when you were starting, how much space it took up?

Has that been solved? Is it still the same? No. It's almost, it's like little increment advances. I think we haven't had like this really big breakthrough in technology since probably the internet, I would say. I don't think we've seen that. I think we're coming up to one, though.

I think we're going to see that in the next couple years. With AI? I think the big breakthrough, there's something that's going to come that's going to overtake AI and it's going to be quantum computing. Tell me about that. I don't know what that is. I think quantum computing is going to change the game. It's going to take AI to the next level. So AI requires lots of power, lots of processing. But I think quantum computing is going to change the world forever. And I don't know how that's going to look post quantum computing. But I see. that as like the big next AI and quantum computing and both AI and quantum computing combined is like a real force multiplier. What's the projection on quantum computing? When does that become real? They say like five to 10 years. Some say 20, 30 years. It's really, I think everything's going to happen a lot faster than people think. I think AI is going to get really advanced than the next two years.

I think quantum computing is here in the next five. I think, I think. I think, or less. I think we're going to see some real big advances very soon. What's different with quantum computing? Quantum computing is really scary and really cool at the same time, but it's just processing things, like, at a speed that is incredibly fast. How many times what we have now? I would say millions.

I don't know. I don't know the answer to that, but I think it's like millions. I think it's like we're talking like a leap unseen. For example, like I know the consequence of what it could do. It could break like all our security for Bitcoin and security for banking. If we have quantum computing, it could crack the code in minutes for every password that everybody has. Whereas now it would take us, you know, thousands of years. So that's, we're talking like a massive like thousands times increase in speed.

in building things like wallets and a financial business, how do you take into account the possibility of that down the road? I think a lot of people are thinking about that right now because quantum computing would break it all. And, you know, I think that breaks down society if we don't have a solution to that. So I think everything is vulnerable to quantum computing, your bank accounts, your, you know, crypto wallets, like everything. The question is how far away is it?

and do we have enough time? And if it breaks everything, would it be legal? Yeah, that's another question, right? But then if someone can have it in their basement, whether that's possible or not, like, we don't know. We don't know what kind of resources it will take, but, you know, AI can have in your basement.

So we'll see. But there's a lot that's going to change in the next decade, and we've got to be aware of what's coming, and we've got to prepare for it. I don't think we have quantum resistant bank accounts yet. And I think we're going to need to have that a little sooner than we might think. You know, it could do amazing things too. We're talking about it could cure probably cancer right away.

Like run this in an AI model to figure it out. You should be able to cure all kinds of things. So there's a lot of benefits. There's going to be a lot of downside risk too. So we're going to have to be. But like it with anything, I think that's how it always is. But it'll be a very interesting world in the next decade. Tetragrammatin is a podcast.

Tetrogrammatine is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge. What may fall within the sphere of tetragameter. Counterculture? Tetragrammatian. Sacred geometry. Tetragrammatin. The Avant Garde. Tetragrammatin.

Generative art. Tetragramatin. The tarot. Tetragramatin. Out of print music. Tetragrammatin. Biodynamics. Tetragramatine.

Graphic design. mythology and magic. Tetragrammatine. Obscure film. Tetragrammatim. Beach culture. Tetragramatim. Esoteric lectures.

Tetragrammatim. Off the grid living. Tetragramatine. Alt. Spirituality. Tetragramatine. The canon of fine objects. Tetragramatim.

Muscle cars. Tetragramatim. Ancient wisdom for a new age. Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath. and see where you are drawn.