Trump Media is merging with fusion power company TAE Technologies in $6B+ deal

President Donald Trump’s social media company, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), said on Thursday that it’s merging with TAE Technologies, a Southern California-based company that has been chasing the dream of fusion power for nearly 30 years. The all-stock transaction, valued at more than $6 billion, would expand Trump Media’s presence into the nascent fusion power space while data centers clamor for more electricity amid the ongoing AI boom. 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 via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), a technique used to go public by private companies that want to raise money quickly but aren’t yet mature enough to take the traditional IPO route. In the quarter ended September 30, 2025, TMTG reported that it recorded a loss of $54.8 million on revenue of $972,900. Truth Social and the company’s streaming platform have failed to generate much revenue, but TMTG has nevertheless managed to amass $3.1 billion in assets, largely 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 have plans for more fusion plants that are expected to generate between 350 megawatts to 500 megawatts of electricity. But the path forward for fusion power remains uncertain. Techcrunch event Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector. Join the Disrupt 2026 Waitlist Add yourself to the Disrupt 2026 waitlist to be first in line when Early Bird tickets drop. Past Disrupts have brought Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, and Vinod Khosla to the stages — part of 250+ industry leaders driving 200+ sessions built to fuel your growth and sharpen your edge. Plus, meet the hundreds of startups innovating across every sector. San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026 WAITLIST NOW 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 put fusion power on the grid sometime 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, those isotopes are heated and compressed until they turn into a plasma. When particles in the plasma collide, they merge to form a new, heavier atom while releasing tremendous amounts of heat, which can be harvested 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 including 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 stabilize the plasma itself. Particle beams bombard the outside of the plasma cloud, helping it to 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 as a radiation treatment for cancer. After the merger, Nunes and TAE CEO Dr. Michl Binderbauer will serve as co-CEOs of the combined company. Topics Climate, Donald Trump, Fusion, Mergers and Acquisitions, Startups, TMTG, trump media and technology group, truth social Tim De Chant Senior Reporter, Climate Tim De Chant is a senior climate reporter at TechCrunch. He has written for a wide range of publications, including Wired magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Ars Technica, The Wire China, and NOVA Next, where he was founding editor. De Chant is also a lecturer in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, and he was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT in 2018, during which time he studied climate technologies and explored new business models for journalism. He received his PhD in environmental science, policy, and management from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BA degree in environmental studies, English, and biology from St. Olaf College. You can contact or verify outreach from Tim by emailing tim.dechant@techcrunch.com.

View Bio Amanda Silberling Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. You can contact or verify outreach from Amanda by emailing amanda@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at @amanda.100 on Signal.

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