Are Trump’s posts worth $1.2 million a year? Wall Street decides | Entertainment

More than 10 customers — mostly high-speed trading firms — have signed up for its new Truth API service, executives told investors and analysts this week. It also plans to sell the feeds to a wider range of customers, including retail investors, news outlets and large-language model developers.

If successful, the product would be a much-needed lifeline for Trump Media, which has reported widening losses ever since the cryptocurrencies it owns began a downward spiral last year. The company on Monday reported a net loss of $238 million for the three months ended in June, a steep plunge from the $20 million in losses in reported in the same period a year ago. The results don’t reflect any new sign-ups for Truth API, which launched Aug. 1.

“Given prevailing market conditions and shifting business and stakeholder priorities, we made the disciplined choice to pivot,” Interim Chief Executive Officer Kevin McGurn said on a conference call with analysts on Monday. “That’s the nimble posture we intend to bring to capital allocation moving forward.”

So far, Trump Media has been appealing to Wall Street traders’ competitive nature, with one salesperson emphasizing to potential customers that other firms were advancing talks, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Trump — who frequently telegraphs policy changes and potentially market-moving news on the company’s social media website — wasn’t mentioned by name on the sales call, though the representative said that one important Truth Social user is particularly active on the platform.

The call echoes sales emails from the company that said “a number of your peers are moving forward with this product,” Bloomberg News previously reported. Subscriptions cost between $60,000 and $100,000 a month, the company disclosed.

APIs have become essential tools across industries, enabling computers and software applications to communicate with each other. Trump Media says algorithmic traders are already scraping Truth Social data, and the new feed would essentially deliver the same information, but faster and in a machine-readable format.

The new Trump Media venture contrasts sharply with how market-moving information is handled by the Federal Reserve, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and elsewhere in Washington. It already faces a legal challenge. Two media organizations, The Intercept Media and the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation, asked a New York court on Wednesday to block the plan, arguing it was unconstitutional for the president to profit from selling government information.

Congressional Democrats have also challenged the product. Senators Ruben Gallego and Mark Warner introduced a bill targeting Truth API, which would outlaw social media firms from selling faster access to information from government employees’ accounts. Other platforms, including Elon Musk’s X, also offer APIs that deliver feeds of user-generated posts.

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff called on the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether the Truth API violates securities laws, calling it “a shocking abuse of the office of the President and the trust of the American public for his personal gain.”

The president is the largest owner of Trump Media shares, with a stake worth $1.1 billion held through a revocable trust overseen by his son Donald Trump Jr. The company rejects any suggestion of wrongdoing, and says the new lawsuit reflects “left wing activists” trying to censor Trump and harm the company’s shareholders.

“Truth API closes the latency gap for organizations that seek prompt access to publicly available Truth Social posts, and any suggestion that Truth API provides access to non-public information is factually inaccurate,” a representative for Trump Media said in a statement.

While some trading firms have already signed up, others have indicated they won’t pay for the service because it’s not necessary for how they operate, according to people familiar with the matter. Hudson River Trading and Citadel Securities, for instance, are among those leaning against it, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing non-public information.

Representatives for the trading firms declined to comment. Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, also provides financial firms with real-time data and news feeds.

Existing insider trading rules don’t clearly address Trump’s propensity for delivering market-moving news via a media company that he owns, let alone an attempt to sell quicker access to those posts, said Karen Woody, a professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law. “No one would have ever believed a sitting president would do this, so no one put up guardrails,” she said.

Asked about the Truth API feeds in a Fox Business interview last month, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said he couldn’t comment. “We’re observing what’s going on and we’ll monitor the situation,” he said.

(With assistance from Steven T. Dennis and Nicola M White.)