Rumble Inc. (RUM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

My apologies. Welcome back. We had mic issues. A little bit of interesting timing, especially with free speech. We're going to try to [indiscernible] it on you. So my appreciation for you guys hang in time with me, and we are very quickly returning to the conversation that you all want. I'm sitting here with the CEO of Rumble himself, Mr. Chris Pavlovski. We're going to dive into what happened in the last quarter, the last year, but most importantly, the things to look forward to in the world of alternative tech and social media as we're getting into the year 2024. Chris, how are you doing today?

Doing great. But I'm going to go to the chat and make sure my mic is working first. One is in the chat if the mic is working better now, two is in the chat, if it's not, I'm going to wait to see what everyone says before we start diving into it for the third time here.

I could see those ones in chat.

All right, it looks like we're good. Chat's posting ones so we'll kick it off. So thank you for coming a [ longboat ]. Really excited to be here. By the way, I'm always looking at the chat. I'm keeping my eyes on it and not on my phone, looking at what the community is saying. But super happy you're here. Obviously, this is -- for me, personally, and I think I can speak on behalf of a lot of -- everyone at Rumble, this is probably the most exciting time to be here. We've built a real business. We have real products. It's the most exciting time across the Board. 2023 was the year that we were going to build all these things. So there was a lot of stuff saying, hey, we're going to build a cloud. We're going to build an advertising center. We're going to compete against Google here and competing against Amazon there. But now it's a reality. Coming into the first quarter of '24, we're now like in a real reality where we have something that is really special, something that like we've done with such little capital compared to other tech companies out there. But such little capital, we've accomplished so much in the last year. And I think that's like just a massive testament to the team, the engineers, the whole team as a whole, it's just been an incredible accomplishment on our side. So I've never been more excited and more happy to be here. So thanks for coming here today.

I appreciate it. And I have to say from an outsider looking in -- we sat here and had these conversations where you're saying, hey, the calendar year 2024 is going to be the Super Bowl year. I don't know if you saw the stream this morning. I won my Rumble football jersey in celebration of that. But you've told me that, hey, we're going to make Rumble Cloud work. We're going to make RAC work. We're going to sign bigger deals. And then all of a sudden, in real time, we're sitting here, the cloud is live. RAC is picking up momentum and you're signing big partnerships with the likes of Barcel Sports just to name one of the many. So the fact that you have been saying it out loud, and now we're sitting here with the delivery of it, obviously, hats off to you and hats off to the rest of the team. But you did say something there that I thought was interesting, and you hinted out a little bit in the earnings call when you're talking about other tech and the money they're spending and you brought up Reddit. And the money that they've spent on research and design. And I think the number you cited was $400 million. And it got me thinking, so I researched it. I had some time sitting there. And over the past 3 years, it's actually in excess of $1 billion. Did you know that?

I looked at Reddit quite a bit. But I'm going to back up just a second here, like speaking about the cloud, we built a cloud that alone, like I sit a step back and I look at that, we built an entire cloud that is now available to the public, not just for Rumble, but for everyone. Microsoft has a cloud. Amazon has a cloud. Google has a cloud. They spend billions and we did it. And we did it with such a small team, and it's just like we have it now. It's real. And going to Reddit, $1 billion, I didn't know -- I knew $400 million this -- for the last trailing 12 months, I believe it is, that they spent on R&D. $430 million more around there. That's more than we raised going public. And they don't have a cloud, they don't. They have essentially a form, a very complicated form, a large form, the largest, but a form. It's been around for almost 2 decades. They haven't made money in what -- ever. Have they ever made money? I don't know, but I don't think so. They're losing a ton of money, and they're spending $400 million on R&D. And I don't know what's that -- what that could be on. How is that even possible? Like at this company, we built cloud. We built an advertising center. We built a video platform, live streaming products like -- and we've done it for fractions of the cost that any of these big tech companies do anything at and in a fraction of the time, and I just -- I think that's like really underappreciated of how amazing this team is and how much further along we are than most people thought we would be at this point in time. Like it's only been like 1.5 years or so since we went public and raised the money, and we have executed on all these things that we said we're going to execute on. I see that as just a major accomplishment. And then when I see companies like Reddit spent $400 million in the last 12 months, it's like my heart explodes in pride because of what we've done, it's pretty remarkable what we've done compared to the other competition out there.

Now let me know if I'm making it a little bit too simplistic, but it sounds like you've done something more in a faster time with less resources. Is that a fair summary of the situation?

That's exactly right.

That's wild. That blows my mind. I don't really know how earnings calls are run in the back end. But it sounds like there was one part when you were speaking about it that I don't know if you just don't have enough time, but I wanted to give you the forum to speak a little bit more, it seems like you were starting to bring up Reddit and almost how -- at a certain point, maybe the start of Reddit, you kind of appreciated it. It almost sounds like a lot of what I hear in this building, the messaging of why you want Rumble to succeed to protect free speech for everyone who cares about it. It sounds like that resonated with you for a little bit at the beginning of Reddit story.

Yes. I think, Tom, the analyst that was asking me the question was talking about the values of it. I think this is very missed in the public right now. But Reddit was founded on the principles of free speech and freedom of expression. Aaron Swartz, he's passed away now, but he was one of the founders of Reddit with Alexis, and Steve, I believe. And Aaron Swartz was a free speech absolutist. He was one of the main activists that were against censorship. And it's just like fast forward, like from the time they founded Reddit almost 2 decades ago to now, and Rumble's being censored on Reddit like -- and I deplore that, like I deplore platforms that sensor and do that, like you can't even post Rumble links on Reddit within DMs, according to some news articles that I read a couple of years ago. So...

I got to put it, Rumble's being censored on...

According to news articles that I read out there, that is...

What a world we live in right now.

That's just it is that this company was founded on this very similar principles that Rumble was founded on, but they've clearly changed their path, and they made a lot of adjustments. And there was a lot of uproar within the community of Reddit in the last couple of years of what they did, but they clearly don't share the same values that we have right now, especially if they're censoring Rumble lengths. That's just -- that's horrible. But one of their founders is not -- unfortunately not here today, was one of the biggest proponents and strongest defenders of freedom of expression, and he was against censorship.

Wow, that has blown my mind. I guess in that exact same vein of thought when I was doing the best I could to prepare for this exact conversation, I saw some interesting messages from you this morning on the Internet talking about the app store and who's using what social media. Is this in the same vein as thought? Is this the day that you're like, I guess, publicly saying to everyone that hang on who's on the side of free speech and who's not?

Well, every company is different and they have their own prerogatives. Obviously, Rumble or ethos is against censorship at all points. Threads is -- I think they're openly against -- openly for censorships. So not something I participate on or use. But every company is different. There's a lot of companies that have different focus. Our focus is obviously allowing dialogue, allowing authentic expression, allowing people to speak their minds. What kind of world we will be living if we can't do that. That's not one that I want to participate in. So that's obviously something that's core to our ethos and something that we push. I can't say what companies like Reddit should do or I have my opinions on what they should do, but they're running their businesses the way they want and they're entitled to do what they want to do. That's their freedom of expression to basically choose what they want to do as a company. But the ethos of Reddit, a few decades ago, was definitely the same ethos that we had.

It's kind of sad at a certain point of like where I am in my life and so many people trying to figure out their way in this world. Sometimes you almost take it for granted. You just assume that as a base fact of how life is going to, you can say what you want. And then you don't realize almost the man behind the current that unfortunately has to be people fighting for it, like the fact that, that's even a requirement in this day and age that someone is standing up to protect it. Teams of people are setting up to protect it, the fact that is required. It's kind of a sad state.

It is required like -- it seems to be a trend. And I think this is the one trend that Rumble doesn't fall into. And that is like you start at a point of allowing people to express themselves and you start on the proper mission and then certain forces over time start pushing you into different directions, like, for example, 2 years ago, we were asked by France to remove some creators. We were asked by IBM, who are releasing our bare metal from to remove some creators. And not based on policy violations, not based on anybody's TOS terms, just based on the fact they didn't like them, IBM made that decision. And like over July 4 weekend, our engineers pulled off, like the biggest thing they could ever done with Rumble is that we moved a lot earlier than we wanted to, a lot of Rumble onto the Rumble Cloud that you see today is that -- and that was simply a forced hand by IBM at the time, and which is crazy because we already made the decision, like a year prior to this happening that we were going to invest in cloud. So we luckily had all the equipment and everything ready to go, and we were able to do it. But by no means did we want to do that over that weekend at that moment in time, but we're essentially kind of forced to do it and forced to do it really fast, not based on any TOS, just based on someone not liking a specific creator. And that's like it's disgusting. It's like one, you're going to like try to hurt a company to do that, and it doesn't even violate your TOS, like if you're going to do that, give notice, change your TOS, give it 60, 90 days to set in and then do it. Don't e-mail us on a Friday night and say, "Hey, you have 48 hours to correct this or otherwise we shut you down. That's what they did to [ Parlor ]. They tried to do it to us. And with us, it didn't work. And it will never work. We made ourselves uncancelable now, and that's what's like really, really amazing about Rumble. We're not going to follow these trends. We're not going to get pushed around by anyone. We're going to stick to our TOS. We're going to stick to what we believe in, in our mission, and we're going to go forward, whereas like every other platform from Reddit to you name it, every platform starts from a physician where they say they're going to allow all this expression, and they get to a point where they're getting pushed around by whoever it may be.

I know you're from Canada, but in the U.S., a core tenet of the country is freedom of speech. And it seems like exactly that so many people would love to talk the talk, but then when it comes time to walk the walk, sometimes, I guess, there's other pressures that eventually make them for whatever reason, A, B or C, switch it up. So I guess to more so tie this together, from a technical perspective of where we are in this world right now, obviously, you've been able to execute that via Rumble Cloud, and it's just a way to not only protect yourself, but other companies and just, I guess, infrastructure required people, companies, whatever it is, that they're also protected. And it seems like one of them that's been working recently very well is true social. And obviously, DJT now trading, a lot of excitement there. I know it was touched on a little bit in the earnings call, but is there more you want to add to that?

We're like -- me personally, I think what Devin Nunes has done with DJT True Social Trump Media and Technology Group, whatever you want to call it, has been unbelievable. It was in a state where everyone was saying like it couldn't get over -- couldn't get across the finish line. It was in that state for quite some time. And Devin has been working day and night from what I see, and he got it across the finish line. He took the company public as the CEO. And now they have an entity worth a lot of money and a lot of cash in the bank. Obviously, they're an incredibly important partner to us on the cloud and now in the publishing advertising side. So we couldn't be more happy for that to happen. But what Devin has done is it has been nothing short of amazing. He's done an amazing job and getting that over the finish line. When everyone said it couldn't happen, like everyone told me it's not going to happen. He did it. So he deserves like a massive amount of credit for what he's done there. So I'm excited about that. They get to -- they're now in a position like everyone is like, oh, like what are they going to do? Like they haven't been given the chance to do much like they have been like isolated by all kinds of different things. Now they've reached a point of freedom where they can do all kinds of things. Think about their valuation they have. Think about the amount of money they have in the bank. Think about the potential that can provide a platform. They already have true social, which has like a really loyal user base on it. And now they have all the resources to go and grow that and do magical things like -- I think just based on what you see what Devin was able to accomplish by getting it over the finish line, imagine what he's going to be able to do with having all this cash in the bank and having the valuation that he has. I definitely wouldn't underestimate them. They've pulled off amazing things. So we're excited that we're just their partners. That's an incredible thing -- incredible spot to be in. So I'm really excited for it to see what they do.

And now obviously, just we're going through the hot news of all the social media. So we might as well keep the momentum going. What's the deal with you're willing to be a part of the consortium where you're the technical provider for potential divestiture of TikTok here in the U.S. I saw Kevin O'Leary talking about it. What's going on there? Because, obviously, the TikTok the potential been is hot news.

Yes. I get this question a lot. The TikTok thing is really interesting because you got to step back and ask yourself if we get into a situation where ByteDance has to divest TikTok and someone else has to own it in America, you got to ask yourself who can own it? Number one, Google? No. They're going to have antitrust issues. They have -- there's -- I don't think they're even remotely in play for TikTok or they can't be, in my opinion. Meta? No. So you take away the 2 biggest companies in the social media space or in the Internet space, which are Meta and Google, and then you ask, all right, well, who has experience with any sort of video and any sort of technology and any sort of algorithms. If Meta and Google are off the map, who can do that? When you look at all the companies out there, there might be cloud providers interested, Rumble is a cloud provider. There might be video companies interested, Rumble is a video company. I don't know who can step in and fill that role better than Rumble. I do believe we are the best candidate to be part of that consortium on the tech side. I can't think of a better partner. Not only are we taking video and we have cloud and operating both of those things at the same time, but we're also working on probably one of the most important features that TikTok has, and that's their algorithm like -- and I don't think ByteDance can -- is going to be giving the algorithm in any of the purchases with TikTok and obviously, in recommendation engines and algorithms at Rumble are something that we're really, really working on since we've obviously gone public and have all this investment now, having a recommendation engine on Rumble, which we're going to be releasing slowly here in the next week -- in the next few weeks, and it's going to continue to improve. But our first iteration will start hitting hopefully this week, maybe next week. We're the only company that's touching these things and even investing in these things that I know of that I can think of in -- when you pull out Meta and you pull out Google, which are going to have antitrust concerns. So absolutely, I think Rumble is the best candidate to be part of that consortium, and I want to be part of that consortium. And Kevin said it very well, I've spoken to Kevin, and he said it very well, like Rumble is high-res video, TikTok is low-res video. We do have low-res video as well, too. But who better to fit that role? Kevin's right, Rumble is a good partner in any consortium on the tech side. I can't think of a better one.

It sounds like you do have very similar ideas. There's no sense in letting the U.S. version of TikTok die. It just sounds like maybe there's some national security issues to get it under the right umbrella here somewhere in the U.S. and let it go because obviously, it's wildly popular.

Yes. And that's more of a decision for the Senate and the House, obviously, the House voted for it. I'm not going to get involved in whether I think it's a good idea or a bad idea. There's a lot of different opinions on that. But in the event that the Senate does vote, and we already know that Biden is going to -- he expressed that he would endorse that. If that does happen, we want to be a part of it. If it doesn't happen, then obviously, that's -- we're not going to be a part of any consortium if the Senate doesn't vote for it. So we'll see what happens. I think it's in the hands of the Senate. And if it does go in the way of divesting, then we want to be part of those discussions.

That is awesome. And maybe one of these days, we'll have that huge announcement. Before we turn it over to the audience who has probably many, many questions for you, I want to give you an opportunity, what are this year, which many times you've referred to as your Super Bowl year, what are some of the major things like you personally as a human fighting for free speech are excited about?

So 4 core products, Video Platform, you have Studio, you have the Rumble Advertising Center, and you have the Rumble Cloud. All 4 products right now, I'm equally excited about because they've -- they're kind of all like in their -- getting in their good stage and good state right now at the same time. So we haven't really had the time to really kind of see. But the one that has had a little extra time for us, we've -- is the Rumble Advertising Center and man, I'm excited about it. And I've said this on the earnings call is that March is looking really nice when it comes to the Rumble Advertising Center. It's giving us confidence in the ability to be able to say that we'll see sequential revenue growth starting in Q2. So I'm really excited about RAC. And the reason why I'm excited about RAC, I think that's an important thing is that RAC is going to compete directly against Google AdSense. So when I say it's going to compete against them, it's going to compete with them on the publisher side. So AdSense takes on publishers, we're bringing on publishers, publishers already using RAC right now. They started getting onboarded this month and last month. Drudge Report is one of them that's testing it. [indiscernible] testing it, the Gateway Pundits running it. There's like many publishers now using RAC and testing RAC and the results are very promising for us right now. And that gets me so excited. Not to mention, we haven't even introduced mid-rolls, we haven't really introduced minerals in OTT or Minerals in app like there's so much opportunity for inventory to create more inventory into RAC that I see such an open field of what RAC can do and where -- from where it is today and how far it can go. I can't even see how far it goes because it looks like it's like -- it just seems like there's so much inventory out there for us to grab. And then on the flip side, you have the advertisers that are coming in, and that's growing. Our advertiser base on there is growing really nicely here in the first quarter. And that excites me because like I see all the stars aligning for RAC to really kind of kick into high gear as we go quarter to quarter to quarter. And it seems like a fairly easy path. A lot of publishers really like it. I think the Gateway Pundit said that it's doing better than other advertising partners, and they said that publicly. So that is so exciting. But like it's hard to say what's the most exciting because I -- we got cloud that we just built a launched last week, a week ago, 2 weeks ago, how is that not exciting. And then you got a Studio that's going to be launching here shortly with the live read ads that creators can do, both small and large creaters. And then you got the video platform, and it's an election year. So it's like there's so many things that are happening right now. It's hard to pick one, but if there was one that we have the most visibility on, it's RAC right now. I would say RAC is giving us -- is a little bit more on the mature side of the products and the visibility that we do see is exciting.

I can honestly say to everyone watching right now, these aren't just the words of the CEO. This might come as a surprise, but I'm a content creator on Rumble, and I, on the content creator side, have actually seen RAC a couple of months ago, I got an e-mail a beta like, "Hey, do you want to join the beta program. And every week, every 2 weeks, personally seeing the progress of not only the efficiency of how it's pitched to me, but the amount of different advertisers coming in, it's not moving at a linear rate. It's truly exponential. So as much as the CEO is saying it's working, I can tell you as an individual content creator on the platform, I'm seeing it firsthand and the growth of it, like I said, it's not just linear, it's exponential. So I wouldn't be surprised as you're kind of alluding to in the next couple of quarters for that momentum to build up in like real dollar size value. So that's going to be exciting. So I definitely understand your excitement there. With that being said, should we turn it over to the audience here and see what's on their mind?

Yes, I think taking questions from the audience is always one of the best things.

Perfect. Perfect. All right. Let's -- folks, this is the time for you to speak with the man that met the legend, Mr. Chris Pavlovski himself. Let's see what this first one is, much potential here and a great deal accomplished in the past year. Now it's delivery time, ring that cash register Rumble revenues game time. That's from [ egg ] man co. All right. Here's a direct question. What has been the market response to Rumble Cloud?

So we just launched the Rumble Cloud. And obviously, we launched Rumble Cloud with a huge partner. That's Truth Social. That's -- I think they're like #6 in the social networking space. I posted that which is like interesting, and I want to -- maybe we should talk about that a little bit because it really kind of -- it really shows like how big they are and how important they are. But to answer the question, we launched it a couple of weeks ago. They're one of our largest cloud customers. We also had RFK junior joined. We brought in partnerships with KinSHIFT and ACP CreativIT, and obviously, it's too early to provide any guidance or to give any kind of insight on what it's looking at. But like just based on the general and just that we're seeing like I said, it's something that we're super excited about. And I think that Cloud is a much different beast than the Rumble Advertising Center, bringing on clients and the sales cycles of clients are completely different. For some -- for new guys, it's pretty simple. For larger guys, it's a little bit of a heart surgery to pull off AWS or wherever they are, it takes time. But with that said, the early indications are very promising for us and we're really excited with the partnerships that we have already put together here in the last 2 weeks. So both ACP and KinSHIFT are going to be great -- are going to be really good arms for us to help on that side.

I think you inherently answered the second question as well, is this report from last year, so Cloud won't be taken into account until next financial report.

Where is this report?

So I think it is Q4...

So yes, the earnings that we just reported is for Q4 2023. We launched the Rumble Cloud here in the final weeks of Q1 of 2023 -- I mean, 2024. So you're not going to see Cloud for a couple of quarters out at this point right now.

And then obviously, then the time, a little bit of a lag there. Where is Rumble Kids category? And should we have a Rumble e-mail?

Very interesting question. And the reason why we haven't got into the e-mail space is that if there's other companies out there that are doing it well, no need to get into it. I'm not going to -- I can't -- we can't compete in every spot and there's already companies that are doing it like Proton Mail and others. So there's good solutions out there. Rumble Kids is something that we've thought about, we're still thinking about and how we deploy that, we want to be very careful. Something we're -- eventually, I think we'll get there. But our focus right now is on the core products that we have and the core content that we have, Rumble Kids, probably, I would say, within 2025, I would say, maybe 2024, but that would be something more for 2025, I would say.

Okay. I appreciate that. Is Rumble's competition more of YouTube or Reddit?

Well, Rumble competes directly against YouTube and the online video platform space. When it comes to Reddit, the way we compete with companies like Reddit are more in the advertising market, so -- for advertisers, bringing in ad dollars. So you compete with a lot of companies for advertising dollars. So in terms of like Rumble as a video platform and that particular component of our business, YouTube is our #1 competition. YouTube is a monopoly in that space, and they basically run that online video sharing platform space at this point.

To expand on that question a little bit more, then do you also view Microsoft, Google and AWS to be competitors on the Rumble Cloud side of things?

Yes. So when you get to the cloud market, the competitors there, I would call that more of an oligopoly with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure and on AWS, the biggest one. And then to a lesser extent, you have Oracle and you have Digital Ocean and a few others. But it's those 3 big guys that contain most -- the largest market share in the cloud business. So they pretty much dictate the cloud world in a large way.

So I spend more of my life and I'd like to admit reading financial reports. And when I look at something like YouTube, I know the rough numbers they could do in a year, but then I look at these cloud numbers, in your mind, do you think that Rumble Cloud could actually end up dwarfing Rumble the content side? Are your visions that big for cloud?

It's a really good question. I think cloud is so independent to the Rumble Advertising side. You have just -- what is YouTube doing, like $30 billion, $40 billion just on the advertising side of the video. So that's a big amount of revenue. And then how much is AWS doing on Cloud? Like there are $80 billion or something...

So if you did AWS...

It's like -- and I think YouTube for Cloud, YouTube is probably bigger than Google Cloud at this point. I still think, but I'd have to double check. So they're both massive markets. And I don't know which one would be bigger than the other. It really depends and it will take some time to figure that out. But I'm unsure at this point.

I guess it's almost a good problem to have when the potential is so big...

Yes, just this massive markets independently there. Amazon has obviously got the biggest chunk of the market. The cloud market is overall bigger than the online video sharing platform market. But it's definitely -- it's a much more crowded market as well when it comes to cloud.

So with this, since we're just on the subject of cloud, obviously, a lot of this is enabled by the hardware from the likes of NVIDIA and semiconductors in a general sense. With that, obviously, right now, we're in the phenomena of AI. Like right now, I hear AI bubble every single second of my life seemingly. Is Rumble getting into the world of AI? Do you have thoughts on AI? Anything there? Like obviously, it has to be on your radar? What's your initial knee-jerk reaction?

So this has changed a lot over, I would say, the last 3 months to 6 months, I've been really looking into it deeply, especially as we're launching the cloud, and we're starting to see that there's like a demand for a lot of these H100s NVIDIA chips. So we're -- this is an ongoing conversation internally right now at Rumble is how much do we invest in AI and in these chips and trying to build a solution on the cloud side that could help that. And I kind of touched on it a little bit in our earnings release. We're going to iterate based on the way the market demands and whatever the market demands from us. At this point, we're definitely on the cloud side, really considering and evaluating AI tools on the hardware side and seeing how we could be of help there to certain customers. But nothing is in stone quite yet, but it's something that is very, very much a big topic of conversation internally and how we invest further into Rumble's Cloud infrastructure. AI on the Rumble side is a little different, but we're working obviously on some algorithms and some recommendation engines that we think of that could be of great help for content creators. So there is a lot more focus on this here in this current quarter than there has been in the past, both on the Rumble video platform side and on the Rumble Cloud side. A little bit more further along in terms of obviously we have to build recommendation engines and really good ones on the Rumble platform side, but still remains to be seen on the Rumble Cloud side, how we're going to invest and what we're going to invest into as we expand.

Individually, I'm happy to hear that you guys are receptive to it, and I appreciate you going down that rabbit hole with me. I'm a Mod running the Rumble sub-Reddit, all Rumble links, videos and websites are automatically blocked and we have to manually prove them every time. So this is what you were alluding to, some issues with -- okay, Black Box. I didn't know that. I appreciate you sharing that with me and the entire audience. But -- so they have to manually prove improve every single one, that's crazy. That's ludicrous.

Yes. That is like absolutely horrible. Rumble was the platform. Think about this for a second. Rumble was the platform for the Republican presidential primary debates and you weren't allowed to share the official links on Reddit for the Republican primary presidential debates. What do you call that?

It has to be some sort of meddling with the leader of the free world...

Is that not -- like is that not like election of interference, like that actually really upsets me. Like the whole Reddit thing really, really upsets me. How could they be blocking links to Rumble. Like how does that happen? Where in Reddit's ethos when they started, were they even for this type of stuff. They were never for censorship and now they're censoring, that means they were censoring the Republican debate. That's what that means. If that's true, if they're blocking our links on that platform, then they have a lot to answer to, because that's absolutely disgusting in my view that they would be blocking Rumble links.

I mean you probably can't say this, but from my vantage point, when you kind of brand yourself as the underbelly of the Internet and kind of anything goes, it almost seems hypocritical then to be blocking all these links like it doesn't make sense. So you can't parade yourself as being the cool part of the Internet and then all of a sudden, like when -- for whatever reason, if it doesn't suit you, you go the opposite like that doesn't make sense.

Something happened at Reddit. I don't know what happened. They lost their mission, I guess, when they sold it to Condé Nast, some ownership there. Clearly, when that happened, took it in a direction that I absolutely disagree with. And Frankly, I think it's -- they've done a disservice to the American people by blocking links to other sites and in particular, Rumbles. I just shake my head and disgust. It's just wrong. And I'm glad I'm talking about it because like I've been -- I've known this for a while, just -- but it needs to -- people need to know that this is just absolutely wrong.

Just 2 different sides of the fence. So you've been sitting on it, well, the rest of this right now are feeling blindsided by a piece of information that just was not well known. I very much hope between now and the next earnings when we can sit down that you have new updated, hopefully, positive answers of what's going on. And hopefully, a new redirection that I suppose the public would find a little bit more palatable. Let's go to this next one. Does Rumble have plans to bring more comedy specials to Rumble and possibly add a comedy category to the main page?

So I think we do have a comedy category. We just need more comedy. So if you have comedy and you want a live stream, I think everyone that has like a comedy special should be -- or doing a comedy skit, they should do it live, put it on Rumble, throw it in the Rumble category of comedy like and get more viewers that way. I think that would be great. I'm all for it. Comedy is a great category. Like Rumble kind of started in the funny video space, comedy space. So it kind of brings us full circle back to kind of the way we started. So I'm all for comedy all the time.

Perfect. What's to stop Rumble from becoming part of the censorship regimes once you leave or when the company becomes bigger? Part 2, if rumble purchases TikTok, will you let it operate without any censorship?

So the first part, one of the most beautiful things about Rumble is that there are so many -- like what do I -- how do I say this? The employee base, the staff at Rumble from the top to the bottom is 100% for this mission. This company is built on this mission from every staff member. This wasn't an acquired company that had a different philosophy. This company was built on the foundations and the ethos that we have. Whether I'm here or not, I am certain that everybody in this company would -- it's just you'd be -- there's no way anyone can survive in this company that's pro censorship, that's just not going to work in this company. So I have no doubt that whether I'm here or not, like if I'm here, definitely not, and if I'm not here, most definitely not. I don't see a concern with that. And as we get bigger, I think we're getting stronger. As we're getting bigger, we're telling Brazil to go pound sand, we're telling U.K. to go pound sand, we're telling France to go pound sand. We're the ones that -- we're not capitulating. As we get bigger, we get stronger, and we're pushing back harder and the system is moving more into the direction that we like to see it. We're fighting in all corners of the world for what is the first amendment, it's freedom of expression. It's also a basic human right that people have. And we're fighting in every corner of the world for it, and we will continue to do that with me or without me that this company is built on that ethos and it's not going anywhere here. If Rumble purchases TikTok, will you let and operate without any censorship? Well, here's the thing with the consortium. We don't know who the partners would be. We don't -- first of all, we don't even know if it's going to happen. We don't know who would be operating it. We don't know what part we would be on the technology side. So -- there's a lot of different -- there's going to be a lot of different players, a lot of different interests. And obviously, we all know how I feel about censorship and I would -- I am totally against it. I deplore it. I don't use threads because they do openly advocate for censorship. So definitely, it's something that -- it's hard to answer at this point in time because we just don't know the makeup of what it's going to be and how it's going to be, who's going to be there or what our role could be. If we're just a cloud provider on the tech side, there's not much say we could have there. So it really depends on the aspects and how Rumble could be part of that consortium and what role we could play. Like I said before, obviously, we'd love to help on the cloud side. We love to help on the operational side. We think we're the best candidate for it. I think we can do a lot and lead a lot on that category, but that's more up to a lot of different players and interest if the Senate even passes it. So there's a lot of ifs and there's a lot of different factors here to consider.

Got you. So a little bit of time is going to tell. I'm all for no censorship though. That's what I would advocate for at all points. This next one why aren't paid partners like Kai and Barstool promoting Rumble more off-platform. Is there a push to bring more people to locals like Candace Owens Justed and to integrate locals into the Rumble app. So maybe it seems 2 distinct questions. Part one. Why aren't paid partners like Kai and Barstool promoting Rumble more off platform?

So Kai and IShowSpeed were promoting Rumble yesterday and early this morning on their Instagrams, they're posting Rumble links to their streams. In Barstool, Dave Portnoy was live on Rumble this morning using only the Rumble chat and talking to the Rumble chat and telling people to go to Rumble to watch them. So I think they are. Is there a push to bring more people to Locals like Candace Owens just did and any [indiscernible]. So the Locals app is somewhat integrated right now. Is there -- we're definitely looking at doing a better and a more comprehensive integration with locals that's in progress right now, and we should see some developments by the end of the year. And with -- we're always continuously trying to bring more people to Locals like Candace Owens and Candace Owens just opened up a Locals account. I believe this week, was it this week, I'm losing my days here. I think Monday. I can't remember it was last week or this week, but yes, she's there.

I must test personally to Locals for any content creator or potential content creator watching this, one of the coolest things, and it always blows my mind because you cannot get this anywhere else. When you have your own private premium community, no other place in the world do they give you the e-mail list. I've said this before, and I'll say it again, but the fact that locals are like, yes, download it. You can do whatever you want with it. To this day, it blows my mind. So a [indiscernible] for those of you who don't know, he is the creator of Locals. I mean, hats off to you. It's an idea that any of the direct competitors I think they would like puke a little bit in their mouth that they were forced to do that. And then you guys are like, yes, have it.

Yes, they don't want to give that away because if you give that a way that allows the creator to have more independence and do whatever they want, but our way of thinking is like, let's just give it away and let's try to be the best platform and made the best platform win. And I think that makes us a better platform in many different ways. And I think that's the right call. And that's something that I -- that's a real good competitive advantage to others.

Speaking of best platforms being the best one. Chris, would you change anything about TikTok?

If I were to operate it, obviously, the censorship there is a concern, but there's a bunch of things that you could change and you can make better. But at the same time, you don't want to do too many things that would cause it to be worse, right? Clearly, they're doing -- they have a recipe that's working and it's working well. I think they could definitely walk away from the censorship. I don't think that's going to hurt them in any way. But outside of that, I don't really see anything specific that it would change. Don't fix something that's not broken, right?

That's fair. Can we get a premium to remove the ads, the ads company off during live stream?

Yes. You can go into your profile -- on desktop computers, it's a lot easier to do it. You can't do it from your mobile app yet. So you can go to your desktop computer, and you can subscribe to the Rumble starter package, which will remove all ads on Rumble. So there is a way to do that. And you get a little lightning bolt in the chat to say that you're a premium -- Rumble premium member. But we're actually introducing this package into the apps very shortly. So you should see it there within hopefully in a month or 2.

But you could get it right now in real time on the desktop.

Yes, you could do it right now on the desktop, no problem. You go to your dashboard and you click on pro packages and you just take the cheapest package there, and it'll give you -- It will take away the ads on the platform.

Okay. That's great. While we have everyone on the Internet gathered here in one spot, do you have any final thoughts that you want to share with how things wrapped up in 2023 or what you're looking forward to in big plans for 2024?

I just reiterate, I think we had a remarkable year. We executed on all the products that we said we're going to execute on. We did everything that we said we're going to do. The team here has never been more excited, including myself, for what we have. We have a real business today. And now we can go sell that business to the market. And that's the fun part because up until now, it was like we needed to build something similar to DoubleClick. We needed to build something comparable to YouTube and get it up to standard, and get it better. And we've come so far, and now we're finally here. It all kind of came together here. We got the cloud in the last couple of weeks of March, like it's -- we got it ready before the end of the first quarter of 2024, and now it's showtime for us. This is where we got to show the world what we can do, got to show the world that what we have and what we've built is ready for prime time and I think it is. I know it is. It's already showing lots of signs of life right now, and I've never been more pumped about it. So we have a really, really beautiful business right now, and I've never been so proud of the whole team on executing on this in the last year in such a short period of time compared to our competition and what they do. I always go -- I'm always going to go back to this now. They spent -- Reddit spent $430 million in the last 12 months. That's more than we raised when we went public, and we have built far more, in my opinion, than they have, both like on the hardware side, from servers to cloud all the way up to a video platform and live streaming. We're not using Amazon, AWS for any of our live streaming products. We're not using them for our Cloud. We built our own Cloud. So I don't know what they're spending $430 million on, that's their prerogative, but that's not how we spend our money here. I think we've done a remarkable job with our cash to build what we need to do. We've now built it. Now it's time to go make money. I've never been more excited.

Man. I mean this goes without saying, but a huge congrats to you and the team. And obviously, thank you for you guys carrying so much weight on your backs. And then on a personal note for me and the audience, the fact that you're taking time out of your day to chat with all of us and go more in depth to your thoughts and your plans and your ideas for execution, it means a lot to me. I know it means a lot to them. And hopefully, we can do this again and even better quarter in a couple of months ahead. So thank you once again.

Thank you, Matt. Thanks for coming out to Rumble headquarters. Let's do it again.