Donald Trump got more than $4 billion richer on Tuesday after shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social platform, began trading on the Nasdaq. Forbes now estimates that Trump—who was worth an estimated $2.3 billion before shareholders voted last week to approve the long-delayed plan to take TMTG public—now has a net worth of $6.4 billion. That makes the former president one of the 450 richest people in the world, according to Forbes’ real-time tracker.
Update: Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group closed trading on Tuesday at $57.99, valuing the company at nearly $8 billion and Donald Trump’s stake at more than $4.5 billion. The numbers in this article have been updated to reflect Tuesday’s closing price.
It’s a remarkable reversal of fortune for Trump, whose net worth has dwindled in recent years as many of his assets, which include office space and retail real estate, have lost value. He’s also on the hook for more than $540 million in legal judgments from two court battles in New York state, liabilities Forbes has deducted from our estimate of his net worth while he appeals. Trump’s nearly 79 million shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, which trades under the ticker DJT (Trump’s initials), are now—by far—his largest asset, worth nearly twice as much as all his real estate, resort and cash holdings combined.
Yet it remains to be seen how much of this newfound wealth Trump can actually put to use. While his shares are worth billions on paper, Trump is currently barred from selling any of the stock or pledging it as collateral for loans for six months due to a lock-up agreement. There’s no telling where the shares will be trading by the time the agreement expires. The stock has seesawed ever since TMTG originally agreed to go public, via merger with a blank check special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), in October 2021. The SPAC’s shares climbed to $94.20 on the news, then rose and fell dramatically based on the ever-changing prospect of its merger with TMTG going through and, often, on little more than enthusiasm for Trump himself. Shares jumped more than 40%, ahead of the SPAC’s merger with TMTG, on Monday alone.
If traders keep the stock at such heights over the next six months, Trump might be able to cash out some or all of his shares for billions of dollars, enough to ease the financial burdens of his many legal battles. But companies that go public via SPAC mergers tend to see their share prices fall after they begin trading. And TMTG is no ordinary business. Despite investors valuing it at nearly $8 billion on Tuesday, fewer than 9 million people have signed up for its marquee product, Truth Social, which faces stiff competition from the likes of Facebook and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter). It lost $40 million over the past four quarters while generating a paltry $4.6 million in revenue—less than half that of an average Cheesecake Factory restaurant.
Additional reporting by Dan Alexander, Zach Everson and Kyle Mullins.
