Trump Media to merge with fusion energy startup TAE in $6B all-stock deal – News

Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. today announced plans to merge with TAE Technologies Inc., a startup that develops fusion reactors.

The all-stock transaction is worth $6 billion. Ownership of the combined company is set to be evenly split between the shareholders of TAE and Trump Media & Technology Group, which is commonly referred to as TMTG. U.S. President Donald Trump indirectly owns a majority stake in the latter company.

TMTG went public last March through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. It operates the Truth Social social network and a $2.5 billion fund that invests in digital assets such as Bitcoin. The company lost $54.8 million last quarter on net sales of $972,900.

Foothill Ranch, California-based TAE is likewise unprofitable. It lost $54.8 million in the third quarter and had $166 million worth of cash on hand. The merger with TMTG is set to give the fusion reactor developer access to the latter company’s $3.1 billion balance sheet, which would significantly extend its financial runway.

TAE is developing fusion reactors based on a so-called advanced beam-driven field-reversed configuration. The system is powered by multiple particle accelerators. According to the company, those particle accelerators and certain other innovations make its architecture better than other fusion reactor implementations.

A standard nuclear reactor generates power by splitting atomic nuclei. Fusion energy, in contrast, is produced by fusing two light atomic nuclei into a heavier one. The mass of the heavier nucleus is slightly smaller than the cumulative mass of the two particles from which it was formed. That mass differential turns into energy, which is how fusion reactors generate power.

In practice, fusion reactors don’t yet lend themselves to commercial power generation because they have significant technical limitations. Those limitations stem from the difficulty of fusing atomic nuclei. Such particles repel each other, an obstacle that fusion reactors can only overcome by producing sun-like conditions in their reaction chambers.

TAE’s reactor is powered by fuel made of hydrogen and boron. The system turns the fuel into plasma, or a cloud of charged particles, and then holds it in place using a powerful magnetic field. Some fusion reactor designs rely solely on magnets to produce the containment field. TAE’s reactor causes the hydrogen-boron plasma fuel to produce its own magnetic field, which reduces the need for magnets.

The reactor is surrounded by an array of particle accelerators. According to TAE, the accelerators inject energetic particles into the system to stabilize the magnetic field that keeps the plasma in place. The equipment is supported by power management systems that can deliver 750 megawatts of electricity in under a millisecond.

In 2017, TAE spun off a unit called TAE Life Sciences to explore medical applications of its technology. The unit is developing a relatively compact particle accelerator that can be installed in hospitals for radiation therapy purposes. Earlier this month, TAE Life Sciences teamed up with the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority to commercialize the technology.

TMTG and TAE expect to close their merger in mid-2026. Around the same time, the latter company will begin construction of a 50-megawatt fusion power plant. TAE plans to bring up to 500 megawatts of additional capacity online further down the line.

Image: TAE