A critical cash injection by crypto giant Tether sent shares of Chris Pavlovski’s YouTube alternative soaring by more than 100% in late December. Plenty of people got presents at the end of December, but Rumble founder and CEO Chris Pavlovski had a particularly lucrative holiday season. On December 20, Pavlovski’s YouTube alternative, which claims the mantle of free speech and is popular with the political right, announced a $775 million investment from crypto giant Tether.
That sent Rumble’s stock soaring by more than 100% over the next week and made Pavlovski a billionaire. Estimates that Pavlovski is now worth around $1.3 billion, thanks to his 25% stake in Rumble (plus options to acquire an additional 6% stake with a bargain-basement exercise price of three cents per share). And that’s with Rumble’s volatile stock down 17% to $13.43 per share Friday, after closing at a peak of $16.27 on December 26. An estimate of Pavlovski’s fortune: “earnout” shares and options that could boost his stake in Rumble to as high as 44%, if the company’s stock trades above $17.50 per share for 20 days in a 30 day period prior to September 2027—a scenario that now seems a little less outlandish than it did a month ago. (Due to his status as Rumble’s founder, Pavlovski owns a special class of stock that entitles him to 85% of the company’s voting power.) “The strength in the stock has been driven by improved balance sheet the Tether investment and the more favorable political backdrop for alternative news outlets,” says Wedbush analyst Scott Devitt. As part of the Tether deal, which Pavlovski claimed in a press release would “put a rocket pack on the back of Rumble as we prepare for our next phase of growth,” Tether will inject $250 million into the still-unprofitable platform’s bank account to be used “to support growth initiatives.” The remaining $525 million of proceeds from the transaction, which values Rumble at only $