Trump Media is Merging with Fusion Power Company TAE Technologies in $6B+ Deal

President Donald Trump’s social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), said on Thursday that it’s merging with TAE Technologies. This Southern California-based company has been pursuing fusion power for nearly 30 years.

The all-stock transaction, valued at more than $6 billion, would expand Trump Media’s presence in the nascent fusion power space as data centres clamour for more electricity amid the ongoing AI boom.

Fusion industry insiders expressed interest in the deal and raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest with the U.S. Department of Energy. Last week, industry representatives met with Energy Department officials to urge them to direct billions of dollars toward fusion projects. Earlier this year, the DOE announced a new roadmap to guide commercial efforts in the sector. However, it didn’t commit any new funds alongside the announcement.

TMTG is the parent company of Truth Social, the microblogging platform that the president spun up after he was banned from platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook in the wake of the January 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol. At launch, the president called it “a rival to the liberal media consortium,” and said he wanted to “fight back against the Big Tech companies.”

TMTG went public last year through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), a structure used by private companies to go public quickly. Still, they aren’t yet mature enough to pursue a traditional IPO. In the quarter ended September 30, 2025, TMTG reported a loss of $54.8 million on revenue of $972,900.

Truth Social and the company’s streaming platform have failed to generate significant revenue, yet TMTG has amassed $3.1 billion in assets, mainly through its cryptocurrency investments and partnerships.

TMTG CEO Devin Nunes, formerly a Republican congressman, stated that the company’s acquisition of TAE would “cement America’s global energy dominance for generations.” The companies said they plan to site and begin construction on “the world’s first utility-scale fusion power plant (50 MWe)” next year and to generate between 3 megawatts and 500 megawatts of electricity.

But the path forward for fusion power remains uncertain. Currently, only one experimental device has proven that controlled fusion reactions can generate more power than they consume. Several other companies, including Bill Gates-backed Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Sam Altman-backed Helion, are in the race to bring fusion power to the grid in the early 2030s.

If one or more fusion startups succeed, they could deliver gigawatts of clean, continuous power to the grid using nothing more than hydrogen isotopes filtered from seawater. Inside a fusion reactor, the isotopes are heated and compressed until they become a plasma. When particles in the plasma collide, they merge to form a new, heavier atom and release tremendous amounts of heat, which can be harnessed to generate electricity.

TAE has been working on a range of fusion devices since the late 1990s. The company has raised nearly $2 billion in total, including a recent $150 million round from existing investors such as Google, Chevron Technology Ventures, and New Enterprise. The company has been valued at about $1.8 billion, according to PitchBook.

Over the years, TAE has struggled to make its various designs work. Its latest effort uses magnetic fields generated by rotating plasma to stabilise the plasma itself. Particle beams strike the outer surface of the plasma cloud, helping it spin.

In the meantime, TAE has also created a new division focused on the life sciences. It is selling a version of its particle accelerator for cancer radiation therapy.

After the merger, Nunes and TAE CEO Dr Michl Binderbauer will serve as co-CEOs of the combined company.

Update 12:05 p.m. ET: Added comments from fusion industry insiders.