Trump Media launches paid data service as Wall Street tracks Trump’s posts

The company behind social media network Truth Social is launching a service that will give paying customers interested in market-moving information “licensed, real-time access” to posts from President Donald Trump and other top accounts, the company said Thursday.

Trump’s family is the largest shareholder Trump Media and Technology GroupThe publicly traded company that operates Truth Social. President’s @realdonaldtrump The account is the largest on Truth Social, according to a 2025 survey by SEO.ai. His account had 12.9 million followers as of Thursday morning. Trump regularly posts official communications primarily on Truth Social, making his account a must-follow for Wall Street firms and news organizations covering the presidency.

Trump Media did not mention the president in the press release announcing the service, known as API, or Application Programming Interface. But he pointed to potential interest from Wall Street firms. “Markets are already moving on Truth Social posts,” Trump Media interim CEO Kevin McGurn said in the press release.

The White House did not respond to an email about the announcement but forwarded CNBC’s message to the Trump Organization, which declined to comment.

Trump Media did not respond to an email with follow-up questions.

Trump Media’s statement stated that the API will launch on August 1 and that some corporate customers have already signed up.

“This is a huge conflict of interest,” said Virginia Canter, an ethics attorney at the Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit that has been critical of the Trump administration. Minister “He has an obligation to the American people to convey information to them publicly, and now he is conveying that information through a private channel in which he has a private interest as one of its largest shareholders.”

Canter said Truth Social “has effectively become the president’s press room.”

The social network has other major users besides the president, but very few can provide consistent market-moving information. Many of them are conservative figures close to the president.

Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. has 7.4 million followers, while Eric Trump has 3.3 million followers. Devin Nunes, who left Congress to run Trump Media but later left the company, has 4.5 million followers. Former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino has 3.5 million.

Trump Media is following a path started by other social networks that also provide APIs to paying customers. Hedge funds and other Wall Street firms are using low-latency broadcasts to gain an advantage on market-moving information broadcast on social networks. They can use access to post archives to create algorithms that respond to sentiment and emerging trends.

But none of these other social networks are the main outlet for the US President’s official posts. Trump regularly posts updates on his decisions regarding the war with Iran and tariffs on Truth Social, among other topics.

The president shares a steady stream of posts on Truth Social and can post a dozen or more a day. Most posts consist of re-sharing of flattering memes from their supporters. Others are more productive.

On Monday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he would: Resumption of naval blockade against Iran and will impose a 20% fee on commercial traffic. Trump on Wednesday canceled the plan to charge a fee. In another post this week, he reversed a brief traffic stop by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers after two people were fatally shot.

None of these posts were shared on Trump’s account verified X accountHe has 112 million followers.

Truth Social was founded in 2021 in response to X and Facebook’s decisions to ban Trump’s account following the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. It has since been returned to both.

Trump Media went public via a blank check merger and has traded on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker symbol DJT since March 26, 2024. Its shares had since fallen 84% through Thursday morning, according to FactSet data.

Nearly 114 million shares, now accounting for 42% of Trump Media, were awarded to Trump, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. When he won the presidency, he transferred those shares to his son, Donald Trump Jr. transferred it to a revocable foundation in his name.

Trump Media’s stock sales have made it cash-rich, even though it has difficulty turning a profit in its core business. The company purchased Bitcoin with the intention of betting on crypto, but ran into financial trouble when prices crashed. A report by Trump Media $406 million net loss in the first quarter of 2026, according to SEC filings.

In December, Trump Media announced it would merge with a nuclear fusion company and considered spinning off its social media business into a separate company. Efforts to separate Truth Social were terminated in June.