In May 2021, the positioning was reportedly valued at an estimated $500 million. In September 2022, Rumble grew to become a publicly traded firm listed on the Nasdaq as a part of a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) deal. Its valuation at the moment exceeds $1.2 billion.

In April 2023, funding analysis agency Culper Research launched a report expressing skepticism in regards to the legitimacy of Rumble’s claimed month-to-month lively consumer (MAU) counts, a key metric for buyers to guage the efficiency of a social media firm. Culper Research stated it had taken a brief place in Rumble, that means it stands to revenue if Rumble’s inventory value decreases.

“Combined, the web and app data suggest to us that Rumble has only 38 to 48 million unique users, and the Company has overstated its user base by 66% to 108%,” Culper Research claimed in its report.

In a quarterly earnings name following the report’s publication, Rumble reported that its month-to-month lively customers declined by 40 p.c through the first three months of 2023, from 80 million to 48 million. In a monetary submitting, Rumble attributed the lower in customers to its fashionable creators being much less lively on the platform within the first a part of 2023, and information occasions slowing down following the 2022 midterm elections.

“Investors should be especially dubious of rumors peddled by short-sellers who are attempting to distort facts for their own financial benefit. We are aware of misleading claims about Rumble’s monthly active user (MAU) statistics, which, as we have previously disclosed, are provided by Google Analytics,” Rumble spokesperson Rumore says. “Any suggestion that Rumble has inflated its MAUs is false—as any objective person quickly realizes upon even a cursory review of the data.”

Christian Lamarco, the founding father of Culper Research, believes the change in reported customers was a response to its report. “That was a bit of validation, in my view,” he says.

Updated 5:45 pm ET, January 8, 2024: Immediately following publication, Chris Pavlovski, Rumble’s founder and CEO, said in a post on X that the SEC investigation was a part of “the playbook to try and destroy” the corporate.

“A short seller creates a bogus report and sends it to the SEC. The SEC investigates the bogus report. Then the short seller talks to the media to get a story about how the SEC is investigating the report that started with him. The media happily writes the story,” Pavlovski wrote. “The report is bogus, but that doesn’t matter—it’s all to get investors to sell the stock so the short seller profits.”

Pavlovski added that the corporate used Google Analytics to trace consumer metrics “so we could be ready for this very moment.”