Trump Media triples revenue selling faster access to president's posts

Trump Media & Technology Group told the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday that its third-quarter revenue tripled from a year earlier, to $3 million. About $1.8 million came from subscriptions to the Truth+ streaming platform and the Truth API, with the growth driven primarily by the API — a feed launched over the summer that gives news organisations and Wall Street firms 'real-time' access to posts from 'high-ranking Truth Social accounts'.

Reuters reported in October that Bloomberg, Susquehanna International Group and Jump Trading had bought API subscriptions at $60,000 to $100,000 a month. The feed technically carries every post on the platform, but with Truth Social's audience at roughly six million users, the attraction is one account. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff wrote to SEC chair Paul Atkins in July urging an investigation into whether the service violates federal securities law. In a statement, they said the plan to disseminate market-moving information through the president's own company, 'while charging insiders for access ahead of the public', represents 'an abuse of the office of the President and the trust of the American public for his personal gain'.

Trump takes no presidential salary, and told 60 Minutes on Sunday he devotes 'almost no time' to his net worth: 'I have a lot of money and far more than I ever thought I'd have.' His businesses brought in at least $2.2 billion last year, the Independent reports.

The growth comes from a business the original investors were never promised. The brochure drawn up when Trump launched the company in 2021 — after his removal from Twitter and Facebook following the January 6 attack on the Capitol — projected $3.6 billion in annual revenue by this year, mostly from streaming, and 81 million users. Advertising still brings in about $1 million a quarter; Meta reported more than $64 billion over the same three months.

The company also holds more than 15,000 bitcoin, about $1.1 billion, kept as part of a strategy to build value through cryptocurrency's rising price — a position that lost hundreds of millions of dollars in last year's crash and has added nearly half a billion in gains since prices recovered in August. The quarter still ended with a $26.5 million loss, and the stock has dropped around 30 per cent since Democrats won the midterm elections, touching a record intraday low of $3.80 last Thursday. 'While the market was trading on headlines, the underlying business didn't flinch,' interim chief executive Kevin McGurn told the earnings call.

Shareholders vote next month on a merger with a nuclear fusion company. If it passes, the firm that carries the president's posts plans to become a power company, with the social network attached.