By Jennifer Hiller | Photography by Adam Amengual for WSJ
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. -- Trump Media & Technology Group is embarking on a $6 billion foray into power generation with an unlikely partner pursuing an unlikely technology, one that has yet to produce a single watt of electricity.
In a quiet office park tucked in a hillside, technicians at fusion company TAE Technologies make adjustments to a 40-foot-long tube of nickel-chromium alloy. The partially disassembled research reactor, nicknamed "Norm," is the latest design in a decadeslong pursuit by TAE to create a star on Earth.
"My wife used to say this to me many times: 'Are you sure you're not chasing ghosts?'" said Chief Executive Michl Binderbauer.
Trump Media, the parent company of the president's social-media company Truth Social, agreed in December to merge with the private firm in a deal that would bring fusion investing to the public markets for the first time.
The combined company plans to start construction this year on a fusion plant that would eventually increase to 50 megawatts, enough to power tens of thousands of homes, with an ambitious goal to generate electricity by 2031.
First, TAE must prove it can make fusion work.
The Norm prototype has convinced TAE that it can build a commercial power project. The merger would provide capital to do so and eliminate the need for ongoing rounds of fundraising. It also lands TAE in the middle of a geopolitical race -- and a thicket of potential conflicts.
Power and the AI race
Fusion, the reaction that powers the sun, has long been considered the ultimate clean-energy prize: potentially limitless electricity without greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. Yet it remains elusive. No system has reliably produced more energy than it consumes.
Conventional nuclear plants split heavy atoms in a process called fission. Fusion does the opposite: It combines light atomic nuclei into heavier ones, releasing enormous energy.
Urgency is growing alongside the artificial-intelligence boom. The U.S. is racing China for both AI dominance and to achieve commercial fusion. Data centers are scrambling for electricity and largely turning to natural gas. Experts generally agree fusion has great potential, but many consider commercial viability at least a decade away.
Trump Media's investment in fusion shouldn't come as a surprise, said Chief Executive Devin Nunes. "There's not a social-media company out there that isn't in the energy space."
Funding strains
When representatives from TAE and Trump Media first crossed paths last year, TAE was facing a funding crunch. The company has raised nearly $1.4 billion since 2000, among the largest sum of any fusion venture, but its capital needs were swelling.
TAE closed a $150 million fundraising round last summer, part of the $500 million Binderbauer estimated he needed to build a successor to Norm. When his engineers suggested they could skip ahead to a power plant reactor, Binderbauer suddenly found he needed to raise a few billion dollars.
"We had a bunch of big leads committing and then just not following through," said longtime investor Michael Schwab, the son of brokerage founder Charles Schwab, who along with other board members was helping to keep TAE afloat.
While Binderbauer struggled to fundraise, the success of fission reactor developers Oklo and NuScale Power grabbed the attention of the industry. Oklo went public through OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in 2024 and has a market cap near $9 billion. NuScale, public since 2022, has a market cap around $3.5 billion.
"People were just trying to lowball us," Schwab said. "After all this time, after all this work, we can't accept that. And then, look at these public-market comps."
TAE explored going public through a SPAC but faced resistance. In addition to fusion, it has other business lines: a power-management division and a medical unit working on particle-beam technology for targeted therapy for recurrent cancers. Investors suggested they preferred a simpler story focused solely on fusion.
The merger's origins lie in a casual catch-up between two college friends: Jonathan Toretta, a veteran energy banker now at TAE, and Kevin McGurn, a Trump Media adviser and CEO of Yorkville Acquisition. McGurn had a lightbulb moment about a potential TAE-Yorkville matchup. Conversations continued for a few months and in mid-November, Trump Media joined in.
On a Sunday morning, Nunes called Binderbauer and pitched a combined company that would allow all three of TAE's business lines to continue.
"Give me 24 hours to think about it," Binderbauer said. He and the board saw a fundraising solution.
"We talked about the association [with the Trump family] and what that would do," said Schwab, who is set to become chairman of the combined company when the deal closes. "But at the end of the day, they've just now made essentially one of the biggest investments into fusion ever."
That makes Trump "the greenest president we've ever had," added Schwab.
Binderbauer, an Austrian-born physicist who first came to the U.S. in high school, wants his company to stay neutral politically.
"We've got the capital we need now. Yes, we're a public company. Yes, we're going to be in this politically polarized world where unfortunately they are so far-right," he said.
"That's not TAE. TAE is a center company. We're neither blue nor red. I always say this is not political. We're trying to make electrons for every human being."
Presidential support
After the merger announcement, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote that TAE would "clearly have major political support from President Trump." Ethics experts say that perception alone poses risks.
Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush, said fusion's likely reliance on federal funding makes presidential involvement problematic.
"One risk is that the government could pick a winner based on political allegiance," Painter said, potentially steering resources toward the wrong technology.
Nunes dismissed concerns that TAE would seek preferential treatment. "It's not like we're running around with our hands out because we don't need the money," he said.
The merger provides TAE with up to $200 million at the deal's signing plus an additional $100 million upon the filing of regulatory documents. Nunes and Binderbauer will serve as co-CEOs. Last month, Trump Media said it might spin out Truth Social to create separate companies with distinct strategies.
Nunes said his focus will be on commercial partnerships and securing locations for TAE's project. Binderbauer acknowledged the possibility of future federal funding but said TAE would compete for contracts like any other firm.
Fusion challenge
Binderbauer, 57, and his mentor, Norman Rostoker, were among those who co-founded TAE in 1998. They raised funds by showing investors a $10,000 research reactor constructed from fiberglass sewer pipe wrapped in speaker wire. Norm is named for Rostoker, who died in 2014.
Early investors included Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, philanthropist Arthur Samberg and actor Harry Hamlin.
"It was sort of almost heresy," Binderbauer said. "It's like, Really? You bunch of cowboys in the garage in California think you can do what government programs at billions of dollars and decades have not yet achieved. Who do you think you are?"
Ernest Moniz, a physicist and former energy secretary during the Obama administration, sits on TAE's board. He was a longtime doubter of fusion's commercial viability but was drawn by TAE's attempt to solve a difficult science problem.
"Assuming success in the fusion, the much simpler engineering should also lead to a much more attractive cost of generating electricity," Moniz said. "I think the risk isn't quite as high as many think, but that remains to be seen. I'm not going to be Pollyannaish. Until it's done, it's not done."
Binderbauer's goal is "net electrons" -- producing more electricity than the system consumes.
"To me, if we can make net power for a blip, that would already be a home run," he said.
For Nunes, the ambition is building a campus capable of generating thousands of megawatts of electricity -- and beating China in the fusion race. "They're putting untold billions into this," he said.
Between those visions lies a formidable scientific and commercial gauntlet.
The sun's mass makes it a gravity-powered fusion reactor, but on Earth, scientists need other ways to create plasma -- a superheated, electrically charged gas -- and confine it to force atoms to collide.
TAE creates something like a smoke ring of plasma and aims high-powered neutral particle beams at it to heat and stabilize it, spinning the plasma, like keeping a toy top in motion. Its ability to control the plasma, plus Norm's streamlined design versus earlier research reactors, convinced TAE it can build a power plant.
To avoid creating and managing radioactive waste, TAE wants to use a fuel that requires far hotter plasmas than other fusion companies aim for, posing a bigger physics challenge. At such high temperatures, plasma radiates energy to cool itself quickly.
George Tynan, adjunct professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, compared it to heating a mountain cabin in the snow with the windows open.
Binderbauer says he sees a pathway to adequate energy confinement and is confident in TAE's technology and experience building complex machines.
With tens of thousands of components, small deviations can derail performance, he says, so engineers adjust, test and repeat. "Everybody starts to doubt," he said. "It never works on day one."
Write to Jennifer Hiller at jennifer.hiller@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 28, 2026 12:00 ET (16:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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