Rumble

Early years (2013–2019)

Rumble was founded in Toronto on October 30, 2013, by Chris Pavlovski, a Canadian businessman whose family is from Macedonia. The same year, Pavlovski also co-founded Cosmic Development, an IT and software services company that does business in Canada, North Macedonia and Serbia. Ryan Milnes, the co-founder and CEO of Cosmic Development, serves on Rumble's board, while Cosmic Development provides content-moderation services for Rumble. Vladimir Novachki, Cosmic Development's former CTO, now serves as the CTO of the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG).

Rumble was originally founded as an alternative to YouTube for independent vloggers and smaller content creators. Pavlovski founded the platform after seeing that Google was prioritizing influencers on YouTube over independent content creators. In its early years, Rumble was a lesser-known website. During that time, it featured videos from Reuters, America's Funniest Home Videos, E. W. Scripps Company, and even Snopes.

By 2017, Rumble was receiving increasing media attention for its work with content creators and its use of machine learning and AI to manage content licensing. That year, it reported a digital media presence of 300,000 videos, and 60,000 content creators. It also claimed to reach 100 million active users and generate more than 250 million views per month.

Political identity, antitrust lawsuit (2020–2021)

The platform received a large influx of viewership from 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Monthly visitors rose from 1.6 million in 2020, to 31.9 million by 2021. Just before the 2020 United States presidential election, Pavloski invited Republican politician Devin Nunes to join the platform. Nunes, who accused YouTube of overly censoring his channel, began posting on Rumble, with other prominent conservatives, such as Dinesh D'Souza, Dan Bongino, Sean Hannity, and Representative Jim Jordan, following soon after. In June 2021, former US president Donald Trump joined Rumble in preparation for recording his Ohio campaign rally.

In the first nine months of 2021, Rumble generated more than $6.5 million in revenue, mostly from advertisements; however, it was not profitable. On January 11, 2021, Rumble filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google over its search algorithms, seeking damages exceeding $2 billion. Rumble alleged that Google manipulated its algorithm so as to favor Google's own YouTube over Rumble in Google search results. Rumble alleged that this direct manipulation reduced its viewership and resulted in lower advertising revenues for their company. In August 2022, a California judge said that Rumble's case against Google can proceed.

Funding, Truth Social hosting, public company (2021–2024)

Rumble first began to develop a relationship with US president Donald Trump after he was de-platformed in the wake of the January 6 United States Capitol attack. Soon after, the company received $25 million in backing from Peter Thiel and then-Senator J.D. Vance through Narya Capital in May 2021, with that round of funding valuing Rumble at around $500 million. In October 2021, Rumble acquired Locals. On December 14, 2021, TMTG announced that it entered a "wide-ranging technology and cloud services agreement" with Rumble in a statement that also stated that Rumble would operate part of Truth Social as well as TMTG. Also in December 2021, Rumble challenged a New York law prohibiting hate speech on social media.

In August 2022, Rumble announced plans to provide an online advertising platform known as Rumble Ads, with Truth Social as its first publisher. Rumble became a publicly traded company in September 2022, trading under ticker RUM on the Nasdaq, after merging with a special-purpose acquisition company. Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, helped broker the deal. In May 2023, Rumble acquired the podcasting platform CallIn.

Rumble moved its headquarters to Longboat Key, Florida, in 2023. That same year, Rumble was granted exclusive rights to the online stream of the Republican presidential primary debates. In 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission confirmed that Rumble was under an active investigation, the exact nature of which is unknown. Early that year, Pavlovski stated that the "short-lived investigation was part of a coordinated ploy by short sellers manipulating the market." The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission later cleared Rumble.