1990 he moved with the institute back to Florida. In Florida he worked as a consultant and started companies to support the development and commercialization of his work. In 1990 his publishing company, Hadronic Press, Inc, was registered in Florida under the names of Santilli and his wife. Santilli consulted for a company called EarthFirst from 1998 to 2001, and after the relationship ended he sent letters to several of EarthFirst's clients saying they were infringing patents he owned on MagneGas. This led to five years of litigation. In 2007 he founded MagneGas Corporation which went public through a reverse merger in early 2008; the reconstituted company acquired a license to Santilli's inventions in the territory of the western hemisphere from a company called Hyfuels, Inc. of which Santilli was the CEO, and later that year directly acquired other patents and trademarks related to MagneGas from Santilli. According to MagneGas' annual report for the financial year ending December 31, 2017, Santilli's son, Ermanno, was the President and CEO, and due to their holdings of preferred stock, "the Santilli Family has the ability to significantly influence all matters requiring approval by stockholders of our company." His wife Carla is a director. Their daughter and Ermanno's sister, Luisa Ingargiola, is a director and was formerly the CFO. Ruggero had no executive or director role, but the licenses with Hyfuels remain in place and he "personally contributed a small refinery" for the company's use. As of Nov 2nd, 2018, Carla Santilli and Luisa Ingargiola had both resigned from their roles as directors with the company and Ermanno Santilli had stepped down as CEO. After an explosion at its facility in 2016, the company changed its raw material from organic waste to soybean oil. As of 2018, the company was not profitable; it had revenue from selling its gas to metalworking companies as an alternative to acetylene, and aspired to compete more broadly with natural gas. As of 2018 two people had been killed and one person injured by MagneGas canisters; as of July 2018 the company was under investigation by OSHA as well as the US gas transport regulator. In 2013, Santilli became involved with another publicly traded company called Thunder Fusion Corporation, formed when a publicly traded shell company acquired intellectual property generated by Santilli around fusion power that had been owned by Hyfuels. The company changed its name to Thunder Energies