How Trump Spun a Social Network Into a Nuclear-Fusion Company

A media company backed by the president’s family is now venturing into electrical plants for artificial intelligence.

President Trump

Now, a merger with a fusion-energy company aims to capitalize on the latest sizzling—and speculative—market: the AI boom’s insatiable appetite for power. Welcome to the shotgun strategy of Trump Media and Technology Group.

“The primary value of Trump Media is that Trump is the president,” said Peter Schiff, a longtime financial analyst and chief economist of Euro Pacific Asset Management. “It’s a company in search of a business.”

A merger agreement Thursday with TAE Technologies valued at $6 billion marks the first family’s biggest foray yet into mainstream finance and the U.S. economy since President Trump returned to the White House. While the Trump Organization continues to land new real-estate projects, and the president’s sons have launched an array of new initiatives across crypto and more, few ventures rival Thursday’s deal in scale or prominence.

The tie-up is a big bet on a commercially unproven technology that has the U.S. government at its back. As AI’s power needs have become a pressing economic issue, the Trump administration has unveiled many programs aimed at boosting technologies like nuclear fusion to meet surging demand.

The new venture also represents the latest twist for the media company launched after Trump’s ban from Twitter in 2021, just as much of Wall Street shunned the out-of-office leader following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

No more. TAE’s backers include a who’s who of American corporations: Alphabet, Chevron, Goldman Sachs. Family offices of Addison Fischer, the Samberg family and others are also invested.

TAE is one of the oldest—and most prominent—companies working in the relatively nascent field of commercial nuclear fusion. Board members include Ernest Moniz, a former U.S. energy secretary and nuclear physicist, and longtime investor Michael Schwab.

Michl Binderbauer, chief executive of TAE, said in an interview that he has spoken with Donald Trump Jr., who will sit on the company’s nine-person board, but hasn’t conversed with the president. Schwab, a mutual friend of Binderbauer and the Trump family, is a longtime investor and board member at TAE and will serve as chairman of the combined company. He is the son of brokerage founder Charles Schwab.

Binderbauer said his company has a “credibly battle-tested, mature team” and results from its latest reactor that make it confident it can build a power plant. Two decades of research have driven down the size, cost and complexity of doing so.

“We’ve got the tools ready to go. The capital is a big deal, and it’s a multibillion-dollar undertaking,” Binderbauer said. This merger would give TAE a co-owner with capital and “the forward-leaning bold attitude to go all in” on fusion.

Details about the deal are sparse. Trump Media Chief Executive Devin Nunes will join Binderbauer as co-CEO of the combined company. In a conference call with investors that lasted less than eight minutes, they touted the creation of the U.S.’s first publicly traded nuclear-fusion company and said they hoped to achieve first power in 2031.

The stock price for Trump Media, which has reported hundreds of millions in operating losses in recent years, surged more than 40% after Thursday’s deal was announced, though it’s still down 56% for the year. The Trump family has a near-majority stake in the company.

Trump Media built “uncancellable infrastructure to secure free expression online for Americans,” Nunes said in a news release. “Now we’re taking a big step forward toward a revolutionary technology that will cement America’s global energy dominance for generations.”

The first family has expanded its reach across venture-capital firms, investment banks and others with a slew of new products in recent months. On Thursday, many people in the Trump family’s financial orbit said the latest venture took them by surprise.

Trump Media’s path to this technology has been a topsy-turvy one stretching through some of the riskiest corners of financial markets.

The parent of the Twitter-like platform went public last year through a special-purpose acquisition company, avoiding some of the red tape of a traditional initial public offering.

The company has searched for growth by announcing products ranging from the Truth+ streaming platform to investment products. As crypto prices soared earlier this year, Trump Media unveiled plans to stockpile bitcoin and launch exchange-traded funds. A partnership with Crypto.com promised to offer prediction markets on Truth Social.

Now, the merger with TAE aligns more closely with other new ventures in the expanding Trump business empire, including a manufacturing SPAC backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., as well as American Bitcoin, a newly public company operating data centers to mine for bitcoin.

Even though scaling fusion technology is years away, the sector has seen a surge in interest. Global funding topped $7.1 billion across 50 startups, S&P Global said in a July research report. Venture-capital firms poured another $3.3 billion into nuclear fusion in 34 deals in the third quarter of this year, an almost 600% increase over the same period last year, according to PitchBook data.

The Energy Department in October unveiled a national strategy to accelerate the development of fusion. The following month, a DOE reorganization that cut two big clean-energy offices added a new Office of Fusion.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright has said the agency plans to boost private-sector efforts to advance nuclear fusion.

Rep. Don Beyer (D., Va.), co-chair of the House Fusion Energy Caucus, said the merger raises conflicts of interest concerns and that will require oversight “to ensure that the U.S. government and public funds are properly directed towards fusion research and development in ways that benefit the American people, as opposed to the Trump family and their corporate holdings.”

Write to David Uberti at david.uberti@wsj.com, Jennifer Hiller at jennifer.hiller@wsj.com and Scott Patterson at scott.patterson@wsj.com