Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company behind Truth Social, announced Thursday it will merge with a nuclear fusion startup, in a $6 billion bet that combining a failing social media platform with experimental physics will generate something other than investor confusion.
You can't spell Truth without the first and third letters of TMTG. So that's something. (JarTee/depositphotos)
The deal pairs TMTG, which reported quarterly revenue of $927,900 while burning through $54.8 million, with TAE Technologies, a fusion power company backed by Google and Chevron that has not yet achieved sustained fusion reactions. Together they plan to build “the world’s first utility-scale fusion power plant” by next year, which fusion scientists describe as “ambitious” in the same tone hostage negotiators use the word “optimistic.”
Devin Nunes, currently chairman of Trump Media and formerly famous for suing a Twitter account pretending to be his cow, will serve as co-CEO of the combined entity. He said the merger represents “a revolutionary technology that will cement America’s global energy dominance for generations,” though he did not explain how a social media company that generates less quarterly revenue than a moderately busy Chick-fil-A franchise will accelerate physics breakthroughs that have eluded scientists for over 70 years.
“Trump Media & Technology Group built uncancellable infrastructure to secure free expression online for Americans,” Nunes said, referring to Truth Social, a platform where the only account anyone pays attention to is the one the president frequently s***posts from until the wee hours of the morning. Nunes added that fusion power will “lower energy prices, boost supply, ensure America’s A.I.-supremacy, revive our manufacturing base and bolster national defense,” which is almost definitely the result of asking ChatGPT to write a press release while full on hallucinating.
The deal should close by mid-2026, approximately when TAE was originally supposed to achieve commercial fusion back when it was founded in 1998. TAE recently achieved plasma temperatures of 75 million degrees Celsius in its reactor, which successfully recreates the temperature at the sun’s core while Truth Social’s servers struggle to recreate the experience of MySpace in 2007. Shareholders of both firms will each own approximately 50% of an entity that plans to master both social media engagement and the process that powers stars.
Nuclear fusion, which generates power by forcing hydrogen atoms together until they surrender and become helium, has been perpetually 20 years away from commercial viability for the past 70 years. Truth Social has been perpetually 6 months from profitability since 2021, showing similar commitment to aspirational timelines.
This either represents nuclear fusion or the implosion of Truth Social, tough to say. (unomay/depositphotos)
Analysts describe this as a “pivot,” which traditionally means abandoning what doesn’t work to try something new, though in this case it means abandoning what doesn’t work to try something that hasn’t worked for anyone else.
The merger announcement sent TMTG shares surging 27% in early trading, though the stock remains down from its initial public offering price. Investors apparently believe that while the company cannot figure out how to sell advertising on a social network, it will successfully commercialize a technology that requires temperatures 15 times hotter than the sun’s core and magnetic fields strong enough to contain plasma without touching physical walls.
The deal was approved unanimously by both boards, which either demonstrates confidence in the merger thesis or suggests that directors of a money-losing social network and a perpetually pre-commercial fusion company are uniquely willing to believe impossible things.
TMTG and TAE did not respond to questions about whether Truth Social posts would be used to train AI models to design fusion reactors, though, given the platform’s content, this would result in reactors that refuse to generate power unless you admit the 2020 election was stolen and promise to investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
