By George Glover

Rumble stock was rallying on Thursday after the video-sharing platform said it would change its name and tweak its business structure, becoming the latest company to promise an artificial-intelligence pivot.

Shares jumped 16.5% to $8.49 ahead of the opening bell. Futures tracking the S&P 500 were 0.7% higher after President Donald Trump signed an agreement to end the war in the Middle East.

Rumble said late Wednesday that it had closed the acquisition Northern Data, the German AI infrastructure company it agreed to buy in November. Northern Data owns about 22,000 Nvidia H100 and H200 chips across nine data centers.

Rumble added that it would change its name to RUM Group and operate through two units -- the Rumble video platform and Quake AI, a cloud and AI-infrastructure business.

"RUM exists to build the future where that ingenuity wins, and to make sure it belongs to the dreamers and the doers," said CEO Chris Pavlovski. "Quake AI gives that imagination a foundation. Rumble gives it a voice."

Rumble has previously positioned itself as a conservative alternative to Alphabet's YouTube. But the AI investing frenzy has led to plenty of seemingly unrelated companies piling into the space.

Perhaps the most obvious example of recent times was sneaker maker Allbirds, which said in April that it would pivot to AI compute infrastructure. Its shares surged by more than 600%.

Allbirds said on Wednesday that it had sold off the Allbirds brand, changed its name to Smartbird, and appointed a tech veteran as CEO, completing its transition from shoe retailer to AI play.

Write to George Glover at george.glover@dowjones.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 18, 2026 07:21 ET (11:21 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.