Anthropic emerges as customer behind Rum Group’s $13.7B compute deal

Anthropic has reportedly emerged as the customer behind Rum Group’s previously disclosed $13.7 billion computing services agreement, marking a major expansion of the company’s push into AI infrastructure.

The six year contract was first disclosed by Rum Group in an August securities filing, though the company did not name the customer at the time. 

A media report on Monday identified Anthropic as the counterparty, sending Rum Group shares as much as 28% higher in premarket trading, with the stock still up 16% Monday morning.

Neither Rum Group nor Anthropic has publicly confirmed the reported relationship.

The agreement would represent a major step in Rum Group’s expansion into AI infrastructure. The company entered the sector earlier this year through its acquisition of German cloud provider Northern Data and now operates its AI infrastructure business under Quake AI alongside its existing video platform.

The computing capacity tied to the reported Anthropic agreement is expected to come from a data center currently under construction in Maysville, Georgia.

The reported deal also includes an option allowing Anthropic to purchase up to 51 million Rum Group shares at $0.01 each, giving the AI company potential exposure to Rum Group’s equity alongside the computing agreement.

The report helped Rum Group stand out during a weak session for several other AI infrastructure companies. CoreWeave and Nebius both fell sharply Monday as sentiment toward rented computing providers weakened.

The declines followed comments from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who called over the weekend for a slower pace of frontier AI development because of safety concerns. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also backed calls for greater caution.

That created an unusual split across the AI trade. While several computing infrastructure companies moved lower, Rum Group rallied on the prospect of securing one of the industry’s largest AI developers as a long term customer.

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