Northern Data CEO to Step Down as AI Infrastructure Firm Advances Rumble Deal
Northern Data AG said Aroosh Thillainathan will step down as CEO and leave the company’s management board, marking the latest senior leadership change at the German AI and high-performance computing infrastructure firm as it works through its planned combination with Rumble.
The Frankfurt-based company said Tuesday that its supervisory board approved Thillainathan’s mutually agreed departure. He will step down from the management board at the close of business on June 17, according to an inside-information disclosure under the EU Market Abuse Regulation.
Northern Data did not immediately name a successor in the short announcement. The move comes less than a month after the company said CFO Elliot Jordan would step down from that role and remain with the company in an advisory capacity to support continuity across financial operations and Northern Data’s ongoing business combination with Rumble.
Thillainathan, Northern Data’s founder, had led the company through one of the more aggressive pivots in the digital infrastructure sector. Originally tied closely to bitcoin mining and crypto infrastructure, Northern Data has repositioned itself around AI cloud and high-performance computing through Taiga Cloud, its GPU cloud business, and Ardent Data Centers, its data center platform.
That transition accelerated over the past year. Northern Data divested its Peak Mining business in November for up to $200 million, including $50 million in upfront proceeds and up to $150 million of deferred consideration tied to profit sharing from mining operations at Corpus Christi. The sale was structured to allow Northern Data to retain potential upside from high-performance computing development at Corpus Christi, where the company said its sites had 600 MW of available grid capacity, including 100 MW used for bitcoin mining operations.
The mining exit cleared the way for Rumble’s exchange offer for Northern Data, which is intended to combine Rumble’s video, cloud and advertising platform with Northern Data’s GPU assets and data center footprint. Rumble launched the offer in April and the deal was finalized in early June.
Thillainathan’s departure follows other governance and executive changes as Northern Data has moved toward the Rumble combination. In September, the company appointed John Hoffman, previously group chief operating officer, as co-CEO alongside Thillainathan. At the time, Northern Data said Hoffman had played a central role in its transformation into an AI infrastructure company, while also appointing Scott Bailey as COO and Chandan Rajah as chief technology officer.
Operationally, Northern Data has recently reported signs of improved utilization after a weak middle stretch in 2025. The company said in May that GPU utilization increased from 62% in December 2025 to about 85% in March 2026, as it transitioned more of its GPU estate from spot-market contracts to reserved and on-demand customer engagements. Northern Data reported first-quarter revenue of €43 million and adjusted EBITDA of about €24 million, above preliminary ranges issued in April, and maintained its 2026 revenue outlook of €130 million to €150 million.
The company has said it operates roughly 22,000 H100 and H200 GPUs and has one of Europe’s largest GPU clusters through Taiga Cloud. It has also said Ardent Data Centers has about 250 MW of power deployed or coming online across ten global data centers by 2027.
