Why is Truth Social owner Trump Media merging with a fusion energy firm?
Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, announced a merger on Wednesday with a company developing fusion energy technology.TAE Technologies, an energy company founded in 1998, will join with Trump Media via a $6bn merger that it promises will propel it to build “the world’s first utility-scale fusion power plant” next year.The move signals that the president and his family continue to look for profit-seeking ventures outside of Truth Social, which remains tiny compared with rival platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).Here is what we know about the deal so far.The media company, which has dabbled in financial services, is engineering a huge pivot and diving headfirst into nuclear energy.
Trump Media has “built uncancellable infrastructure to secure free expression online for Americans”, according to its CEO, Devin Nunes.“And now we’re taking a big step forward toward a revolutionary technology that will cement America’s global energy dominance for generations.”Nunes, a former congressman, is set to serve as co-CEO of the new company with Michl Binderbauer, TAE’s CEO.Shareholders of each firm will own about 50% of the combined company.The company will be overseen by a nine-member board of directors, which will include Trump.
Trump Media has also agreed to give TAE $300m in cash to continue developing its fusion energy technology.The deal comes amid soaring demand for new energy sources that can feed artificial intelligence and the massive datacenters that power it.While this deal is a big bet on fusion power meeting that demand, a commercially viable reactor has never been built.Kind of.Trump launched the company in 2021 to be a competitor to the big tech companies that had kicked him off their platforms at the time, including Facebook and Twitter.
But Truth Social has only a few million active users, a speck compared with the larger platforms.Though Truth Social went public on the stock market as part of Trump Media in 2024, the wider firm has been racking up losses: $54.8m in the three months to 30 September, more than double those incurred during the same period of 2024.Shares of the company soared when Trump was re-elected for a second term, but they are down almost 60% since the start of the year.The merger with TAE, while seemingly out of left field, is on track with the company’s attempts to diversify Trump Media’s assets beyond Truth Social.
In recent years, it built out a massive, volatile cryptocurrency treasury and tried to create new financial products and betting markets.TAE is one of a handful of companies that is working on developing fusion energy, a type of nuclear energy that mimics the power of the sun to produce energy.While a type of nuclear energy, fusion energy is different from the nuclear energy that was developed in the 1940s, which was created through fission.Fission energy was created by splitting atoms, whereas fusion energy creates energy by forcing atoms together.The technology is still in its early stages, and some scientists are skeptical that it can be produced at a commercial scale.
But demand for clean, safe energy has soared with the AI revolution, which has put huge pressure on the energy grid.This is why tech companies and AI leaders such as Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have been investing in fusion energy companies including TAE and Helion Energy, which are trying to commercialize fusion energy.The move by the Trump family business into the fusion energy space comes amid steps by the Trump White House to bolster the technology.Since entering office in January, the US president has made moves to deregulate the nuclear energy industry and accelerate technology development, including signing executive orders that deem developing new technology as an issue of national security.Trump’s Department of Energy has especially been focused on the new technology, with the creation of a new Office of Fusion whose goal is to get fusion technology ready for commercial use as quickly as possible.
After the merger, TAE said it will start construction on a utility-scale fusion power plant that it hopes will generate power for commercial use by 2031.In an interview with CNN, TAE’s Binderbauer said more capital will mean the company can build its plant more quickly.“The velocity [at which] you can get the capital is differentiating.If I raise $2bn over five years, I can’t build the plant sufficiently fast,” Binderbauer said.“Sometimes you get lucky and you meet the right people.
”Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush, noted that TAE will probably get “major political support from President Trump” because of the deal, though Binderbauer told CNN that he welcomes regulatory scrutiny.“I’m not looking for anything special,” Binderbauer said.“Perhaps you get more scrutinized from a regulatory perspective and that’s good because it will give the world confidence that technology is what matters.”
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