Trump Media & Technology Group is aiming to energize growth by selling faster access to President Trump’s Truth Social posts for up to $100,000 a month.
CEO Kevin McGurn told investors on Monday that the company has signed up “more than 10” customers for its Truth API, or Application Programming Interface, data feed, which he said was mostly from high-frequency securities trading firms seeking an edge by potentially seeing the president’s posts milliseconds before they reach the broader Truth Social audience.
Contracts for the new service generally range from $60,000 to $100,000 a month, McGurn said. The Truth API includes access to the social media network’s top accounts, not just Mr. Trump’s, the company has said.
Rolling access to the Truth API feed could give traders and investors a small but meaningful head start in making investment calls based on Mr. Trump’s posts, such as announcements on tariffs and foreign policy. That could raise ethical concerns, financial experts said.
McGurn also said Trump Media is in “active conversations” with large cloud computing firms, artificial intelligence companies and news organizations about signing up for Truth API. Eventually, the company also plans to market the data feed to ordinary investors, he said.
“We’re encouraged by the early demand for Truth API, and we look forward to rolling out the product to other sectors, including retail investors,” McGurn said in a call with Wall Street analysts to discuss the company’s most recent financial results.
Searching for direction
Trump Media & Technology Group, which has never turned a profit since its founding in 2021, has struggled to settle on a business strategy capable of delivering reliable revenue growth. Advertising revenue on the Truth Social platform — President Trump’s primary social media bullhorn — fell in the second quarter, according to an Aug. 10 regulatory filing, although the company didn’t provide financial details.
To jump-start growth, Trump Media has expanded into a range of new ventures, branching into financial products such as ETFs with patriotic investment themes and buying billions in cryptocurrencies to refashion itself into a crypto treasury firm. Trump Media is also merging with fusion energy company TAE Technologies, which McGurn on Monday said will provide Trump Media with “a rare chance to play a key role in securing America’s energy independence.”
On Monday, the company’s second-quarter revenue rose 89% to $1.67 million, but its losses ballooned 10-fold to $238 million due to the plunging value of its crypto holdings, according to Trump Media’s latest earnings report.
The Truth API, announced in July, could boost revenue by selling what may be the company’s most valuable asset: immediate, automated access to Mr. Trump’s public statements. Truth Social continues to publish Mr. Trump’s posts, and those of other top users, so that they are available to everyone at the same time.
But the API delivers the information directly to customers’ computers, potentially allowing them to detect the posts before a human user might notice them on their feed.
Trump Media shares — which trade under the ticker DJT, the same as the president’s initials — slipped almost 6% on Tuesday. The stock has lost about 49% of its value over the past year, while the S&P 500 has gained 21%.
Ethical concerns
The Truth Social API service is drawing scrutiny from ethics experts and Democratic lawmakers over whether investors should be able to pay a company partly owned by the president for faster access to his public statements.
Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, has introduced a bill that would ban social media companies from selling special access to government employees’ accounts that share market-moving information.
Mr. Trump frequently turns to Truth Social for major announcements, including the introduction of new tariffs and progress in diplomatic talks with Iran and other nations. The president has also been a driver of the market’s best and worst five days since his return to office, CNBC reported in May, citing research from Fundstrat.
Fundstrat, which didn’t respond to requests for comment, found that the S&P 500’s biggest single-day jump last year came on April 9, 2025, when the president announced he would pause his tariffs, sending the index soaring 9%.
On Monday’s investor call, McGurn defended the Truth Social API service by noting that it only provides access to public posts, albeit “milliseconds” faster. “Our customers will get published in publicly available posts fractionally faster,” he said. He called the ethical criticisms “misguided.”
But “milliseconds make a difference” for high-frequency traders, Richard Painter, a corporate and securities law professor at the University of Minnesota who served as the chief ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told CBS News.
High-frequency trading firms could face particular legal risk because their automated systems can execute trades in fractions of a second, Painter pointed out. Although Mr. Trump’s posts are publicly available when the API sends them to customers, Painter said that the source of government information, as well as customers who paid for access, are legally required to wait to trade on that info until the data has had time to be reflected in market prices, or else risk violating insider-trading laws.
Trump Media dismissed such concerns.
“Critics continue to mischaracterize Truth API either out of ideological opposition to free markets or a failure to grasp the distinction between public and nonpublic information,” a Trump Media spokesperson told CBS News.
Mr. Trump’s stake
Mr. Trump owns 41% of the media company’s shares, worth about $1 billion, according to data from financial services firm FactSet. While he doesn’t have a management role in the firm, he stands to profit from Trump Media through his shares.
“The structure gives the president a personal financial interest in the market impact of his own official statements,” Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law studies at The George Washington University Law School, told CBS News.
She added: “I have made similar arguments about members of Congress and why they should not be permitted to profit from trading on information they receive in office. Unlike the congressional context, this involves a company the president beneficially owns selling access to information he creates in his official capacity.”
A broader law is needed to keep government officials from profiting from insider information, leaks and other disclosures, Painter said, comparing the situation to the creation of Regulation Fair Disclosure, or Reg FD, in 2000 in response to public companies selectively disclosing material information to some investors and Wall Street firms. Reg FD requires public companies to disclose market-moving information publicly.
In the meantime, Trump Media & Technology Group plans to expand Truth API to more customers, even though it has generated only a “modest amount of revenue” so far, McGurn said on Monday. He added, “We believe this can grow into a meaningful, durable contributor.”
