A Catholic prayer app, housekeeping service and biotech firm: JD Vance’s curious investment portfolio

The most recent financial disclosures of JD Vance have revealed an electic investment portfolio — from the right-wing streaming service, Rumble and a popular Catholic prayer app, to a controversial biotech firm.

The 2022 filings, made to the Senate Ethics Committee, shows that Trump’s running mate also had financial interests in a housekeeping services provider, legal technology developer and student loans assistance company, among others. The Ohio senator has requested an extension on his 2023 filings.

The investments have been made through different companies set up by Vance and his associates, some named in apparent reference to JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

One of those is Mithril Capital Management. Vance got his start in Silicon Valley in 2016 at Mithril, a firm which invests in cutting-edge technologies including AI and robotics, and was founded by his friend and billionaire investor Peter Thiel.

Mithril appears to reference the fictious elvish metal from the fantasy novel series. Vance also has investments through Narya Capital, which he co-founded in 2019, and seems to be named after one of the Rings of Power from the Tolkien novels.

One of Vance’s biggest investments is in the conservative video platform, Rumble, which hosts a number of pundits banned from other social platforms. These include white supremacist commentator Nick Fuentes, accused human trafficker Andrew Tate, and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has been ordered to pay nearly $1bn to families of the Sandy Hook school shooting after claiming their children hadn’t been killed but instead were “crisis actors.”

In 2022, Vance held two tranches of Rumble shares, one worth between $100,001-$250,000, and another for $15,001- $50,000,