The Trump Media & Expertise Group (TMTG) homes a few of its servers in an information heart in Omaha, Nebraska, owned by the household workplace of a longtime Midwestern media mogul.
The server firm, “1623 Farnam Road,” is totally owned by the BERKS Group, the private-investment firm of the Bradley household, in response to public paperwork sourced from the Securities and Alternate Fee, the Nebraska Secretary of State’s workplace, and the Missouri Secretary of State’s workplace. The BERKS Group is an funding firm, run basically like a household workplace, which the Bradley household arrange after they offered nearly all of the belongings from the Information-Press & Gazette Firm (NPG), the longtime media firm that owns newspapers, televisions channels, and radio stations throughout the nation.
The existence of the server would possibly sound like an unsurprising technicality, provided that TMTG is a web based media firm. However TMTG usually retains these relationships near its chest. It has redacted point out of 1623 Farnam within the majority of its SEC filings. Fortune discovered point out of the 1623 Farnam facility in a footnote of a contract between TMTG and one among its distributors, WorldConnect Applied sciences. In that settlement, WorldConnect was due 2.5 million shares of TMTG inventory on the opening of the primary knowledge heart at 1623 Farnam’s location in Omaha.
The connection provides element to the enterprise companions and construction of TMTG, which includes a significant portion of President Donald Trump’s private internet price.
1623 Farnam declined to touch upon the report for this story. TMTG didn’t reply to a request for remark.
President Trump’s internet price is wrapped up in TMTG
Trump is TMTG’s largest shareholder, controlling 53% of the corporate. Regardless of holding no formal function in TMTG, its success as a enterprise is nonetheless instantly linked to his personal internet price. Primarily based on TMTG’s present inventory value, Trump’s roughly 114 million shares are price about $3.6 billion. In December, Trump positioned his shares in a revocable belief managed by his son and present TMTG board member Donald Trump Jr.
Whereas the president could have made nearly all of his fortune as an actual property developer and TV persona, in actuality he’s now a know-how mogul. In his previous life, his enterprise relationships could have been with firms that poured cement or fitted I-beams for skyscrapers. Now they’re with know-how distributors that develop the content material supply networks that energy streaming content material or with knowledge heart suppliers like 1623 Farnam.
These firms will not be family names, nor do they supply providers that atypical customers of social media apps or streaming providers contemplate as they use them of their every day lives. But they’re essential to the operations of any tech firm, together with TMTG. Given Trump’s monetary stake in TMTG and his present function as President of the USA they current new potential conflicts of curiosity which might be distinctive to the twenty first century.
1623 Farnam supplies TMTG entry to the networking capabilities that permit it to hook up with the web. Within the telecommunications trade firms resembling 1623 Farnam are often known as “carrier hotels,” that are bodily areas that function assembly factors for the numerous networks that make up the web.
“The internet is not a single network,” stated College of Massachusetts pc science professor Ramesh Sitamaran. “It is a collection of a large number of independent networks. For [information] to be sent from one place on the internet to another, it has to go through a number of independent networks. So, you need places where networks can physically ‘meet’ each other to exchange [information]. Carrier hotels facilitate that meeting.”
Service accommodations had been early precursors to cloud computing, however nonetheless stay crucial items of know-how infrastructure which might be essential to how the web operates. As a result of they join many various networks in a single location they’re usually present in downtown areas of huge cities, which means that there are comparatively few of them, which in flip has made them worthwhile funding alternatives.
“One could argue this is as important as power, sewer and water,” Brian Bradley, an proprietor within the BERKS Group and the present president of NPG, stated in 2018 when it acquired 1623 Farnam.
A household affair
The Bradleys are a rich household from St. Joseph, Missouri, whose patriarch, Henry Bradley, made a fortune within the information enterprise after shopping for up dozens of regional newspapers within the Midwest and later native tv and radio stations below NPG. In 2011, the household offered nearly all of its broadcast belongings to SuddenLink Communications, a former subsidiary of Altice, for a reported $350 million.
Since then, the Bradleys have principally targeted on working their the BERKS Group, which invests in manufacturing, edtech, and know-how infrastructure, in response to its web site. Six members of the Bradley household presently serve within the BERKS Group’s management as each board members and executives, in response to its web site.
The BERKS Group purchased 1623 Farnam in 2018 for an undisclosed value. On the time, the corporate was often known as Nebraska Knowledge Middle. The BERKS Group pledged to take a position $30 million over 5 years in 1623 Farnam when it bought the corporate.
TMTG’s ‘uncancelable’ media community
As TMTG continues to construct up its know-how stack, it has developed business relationships with little-known business-to-business firms, resembling 1623 Farnam. Regardless of being unfamiliar to most, these firms now play a big function within the operations of TMTG.
For the higher a part of a 12 months, TMTG has been engaged in a course of to construct its personal proprietary know-how infrastructure to energy each its X-like Reality Social and a nascent video streaming platform Reality+. Earlier this week TMTG additionally introduced it might develop a fintech platform known as Reality.Fi. TMTG often touts this technique in SEC filings as integral to its mission to grow to be “uncancelable” by Massive Tech. The information heart at 1623 Farnam was the primary location to accommodate the community for TMTG’s burgeoning tech holdings.
In November 2024, TMTG introduced all of its knowledge facilities had been totally operational. The contract with WorldConnect grants it additional inventory incentives for 5 complete knowledge facilities. It was not clear the place these further knowledge facilities are situated or whether or not they had been all operational.
TMTG introduced its first knowledge heart was on-line in August 2024, across the time it started rolling out its streaming service. At the moment, TMTG has a standalone streaming platform known as Reality+, which is out there on iOS, Android, and Amazon Fireplace TV, in addition to stay content material inside its Reality Social app. These capabilities are housed on a proprietary content material supply community developed by Notion Group, which was launched to TMTG by WorldConnect Applied sciences, in response to earlier reporting from Fortune, an obscure firm with no web site, run by associates of James E. Davison, a Louisiana businessman and main Republican donor.
Household political donations
The Bradley household additionally has a historical past of constructing private donations to Republican candidates through the years, in response to knowledge from the Federal Election Fee and Open Secrets and techniques. From 2014 to 2024, the six relations employed on the BERKS Group gave no less than $76,000 to numerous Republican candidates in complete. Not one of the Bradley relations have donated on to any of President Donald Trump’s three presidential campaigns, in response to the information reviewed by Fortune.
Two relations, Rall Bradley and Eric Bradley, additionally donate often to Democratic candidates, together with in the newest election cycle, in response to knowledge from Open Secrets and techniques. The household additionally donates to the political arm of the published trade’s D.C. lobbying group, the Nationwide Affiliation of Broadcasters, which backs each Republican and Democratic candidates.
