A fusion-power startup revealed its own fusion experiment this week: A planned merger with a tech firm that seems to have little in common with its work, but which does bring access to ruling-family levels of influence.
TAE Technologies, a Foothill Ranch, California, company that has been developing a compact nuclear-fusion reactor design since 1998, announced that it would merge with Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., the Florida-based parent firm of President Trump’s Truth Social.
The all-stock transaction would value the combined company at $6 billion, a substantial increase from TMTG’s $4.16 billion market cap as of Thursday, and a step up from 2021, when its financial struggles reportedly led Trump to ask Elon Musk to buy his social network.
The transaction calls for TMTG to kick in $200 million to TAE at the signing of the deal, with $100 million more available when it files Securities and Exchange Commission paperwork. The parties predict that the deal will close in the middle of 2026, pending shareholder signoff and regulatory approval, which does not seem like much of a risk in this case.
TAE’s plans to construct a utility-scale fusion reactor (Credit: TAE Technologies / TMTG)
TAE plans to spend that money to accelerate its plans to build a 50-megawatt commercial fusion electric-power plant. A merger presentation predicts that it will pick a site and begin construction in 2026, start “pre-commercial operations” in 2029, and begin commercial operations in 2031.
Fusion power, in which atoms fuse together under immense pressure to generate heat that can be turned into electricity, promises safe, zero-emission energy without the radioactive waste that nuclear fission plants leave behind.
Creating conditions similar to what allows fusion to happen inside the sun and other stars has proved to be an immensely difficult exercise; it took until 2022 for a US facility’s fusion energy output to exceed the energy input required to initiate that reaction.
Meanwhile, solar panels offer a much cheaper and proven way to turn the sun’s fusion energy into electricity; on a lower-tech scale, a clothesline technically functions as a fusion-powered clothes dryer.
But fusion’s potential, combined with the growing power needs of AI data centers, has pushed interest in the concept to its highest ever level. The “AI Action Plan” that Trump unveiled in July sees a role for fusion, while essentially ruling out the solar and wind power that the president has repeatedly attacked. Fusion also figures in Microsoft’s data-center ambitions.
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TAE’s plant concept involves using what it calls an “advanced beam-driven Field-Reversed Configuration (FRC)” to confine its hydrogen-boron fuel inside a superhot plasma. Before 2025, it had pitched this as a key part of electrifying transportation; in 2022, it touted its attendance at a fusion-power summit hosted at the White House and approvingly quoted President Biden’s Office of Science & Technology Policy director Alondra Nelson as saying “the world is on fire.”
Building ‘Uncancellable Infrastructure’
Global warming, however, did not come up in the brief conference call TAE and TMTG hosted on Thursday morning. TMTG CEO Devin Nunes and TAE CEO Michl Binderbauer—who will share chief-executive titles in the combined firm—gave brief statements and took no questions.
“TMTG has built uncancellable infrastructure to secure free expression online for Americans, and now we’re taking a big step toward a revolutionary technology that will cement Americans’ global energy dominance for generations,” Nunes said. “Fusion power will be the most dramatic energy breakthrough since the onset of commercial nuclear energy in the 1950s, an innovation that will lower energy prices, boost supply, ensure America’s AI supremacy, and revive America’s manufacturing base and bolster national defense.”
(Before joining TMTG in January 2022, Nunes served in the House as a Republican representing California and filed a lengthy series of defamation lawsuits—most since dismissed or withdrawn—against news organizations, journalists, Twitter, and such online critics as the unknown operator of a “DevinCow” parody account.)
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“Today is a big milestone for TAE, fully recognizing the dedication and passion of our people who worked tirelessly over the last quarter century to advance our research to the point that capital is now becoming our biggest challenge,” Binderbauer said. “Fusion power is the answer, providing reliable, cost-effective, carbon-free electricity– and importantly, cost-competitive with conventional production.”
The merger announcements credit TAE with raising more than $1.3 billion in private capital to date. Truth Social may not have much of a market presence—a November report by the Pew Research Center found that only 3% of Americans had ever used it—but TMTG isn’t just another social-media or technology company.
Trump himself continues to use Truth Social far more than X, TMTG’s board of directors includes Trump’s oldest son Donald Trump, Jr., and the firm’s stock-ticker symbol is Trump’s initials: DJT.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) called for Congressional oversight of the deal in a post on Bluesky: “The merger between Trump Media and TAE raises significant concerns about conflicts of interest and avenues for potential corruption.”
Princeton University professor and clean-energy advocate Jesse Jenkins voiced his own disbelief on that platform: “This is probably the most bonkers real headline I’ve read in forever.”
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