Key Takeaways: Trump Media's Truth API data feed has grown to "mid-teens" paying customers at up to $100,000 a month, interim CEO Kevin McGurn said, defending a service critics say gives traders early access to President Donald Trump's market-moving posts.
Trump Media's Truth API has grown to "mid-teens" paying customers at up to $100,000 a month, interim CEO Kevin McGurn said, defending a service critics say gives traders early access to President Trump's posts.
"We're getting into the mid-teens now, and we're climbing," McGurn told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday, up from more than 10 agreements disclosed two weeks earlier.
The service, which went live Aug. 1, gives subscribers millisecond-latency access to posts from Truth Social's ten most-followed accounts, including Trump's. Trump Media reported second-quarter revenue of $1.7 million, up 89 percent from a year earlier, though it posted a net loss of $238.1 million driven by non-cash mark-to-market losses on bitcoin and related securities.
The controversy has reached the courts and Congress. The Intercept Media and the Freedom of the Press Foundation sued in Manhattan federal court to block the service, while Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff asked the SEC to examine whether it violates insider-trading law. Trump Media, which holds about 9,477 bitcoins plus 14.4 million shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust, is also pursuing a merger with fusion developer TAE Technologies that McGurn called "the single most important driver of long-term value."
McGurn framed Truth API as a standard commercial data product, comparing it to licensed real-time feeds sold across the financial information industry. "Providing licensed real-time public data through commercial APIs is a well-established business practice," he said on the company's first earnings call Aug. 10. The product targets financial institutions, news organizations and developers of AI and large language model applications, with an expansion to retail trading planned.
The scrutiny stems from Trump's habit of making market-moving announcements through his Truth Social account. Paying subscribers gain access to those posts fractionally before the general public, a gap critics argue amounts to privileged access to official presidential communications. Trump Media has countered that presidential communications flow through many platforms and outlets that offer subscription-based access.
The company has also launched an initiative to block unauthorized scraping of its data, which McGurn described as protecting the value of the intellectual property shareholders have funded. Truth Social's traffic, already far behind rivals such as Elon Musk's X, fell sharply this summer, The New York Times reported.
The API's early traction comes as Trump Media's core business remains small. Second-quarter revenue of $1.7 million was up 92 percent sequentially, driven by barter advertising, Patriot Package subscriptions and management fees from its Truth.Fi ETFs. But operating expenses of $165.2 million, roughly 270 percent higher year over year, were driven almost entirely by the mark-to-market of digital assets as bitcoin fell 13 percent to about $58,800 on June 30.
The company ended the quarter with $1.9 billion in gross financial assets, including $215 million in cash and $209 million in short-term investments, against nearly $1 billion in outstanding convertible notes. It has also terminated proposed business combinations with Crypto.com and Yorkville to focus on the TAE merger and core media initiatives.
Trump Media shares, which trade on Nasdaq under DJT, remain a proxy for both the president's political fortunes and the volatile crypto market. The company's 31 employees support Truth Social and the Truth+ streaming platform, which is moving out of beta into broad commercial availability. McGurn said the TAE merger, targeting a close by the end of 2026, remains the priority, though he acknowledged "the SEC process introduces other types of variables."
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
