Trump Sons Take Drone Startup Powerus Public Amid Pentagon's $1.1 Billion Push

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are investing in Powerus, a West Palm Beach drone company they plan to take public through a merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings, the family-backed golf-course holding company, listing it on Nasdaq. The move positions the Trump sons directly inside a defense procurement surge driven by the administration's own policy: a ban on new Chinese-made drones and a Pentagon initiative reported to have earmarked $1.1 billion to procure hundreds of thousands of American-made drone systems by 2027.

The timing is striking. The administration's "Drone Dominance" program is creating exactly the commercial window that Powerus is racing to fill. Powerus CEO Andrew Fox put it bluntly, telling The Wall Street Journal that the drone market "is certainly going to grow faster than, say, golf courses are."

Powerus was formed in 2025, has since acquired three smaller drone firms, and is targeting production of more than 10,000 units per month. The company makes heavy-lift drones capable of carrying industrial payloads and, according to Fox, has built systems capable of fighting wildfires. Sources describe payload capacity variously as up to 675 kilograms and up to 1,000 pounds; the company has not publicly reconciled the two figures.

Brett Velicovich, a U.S. Army special operations veteran and Powerus co-founder who has advised drone firms in both the United States and Ukraine, is at the center of the company's strategy to court Pentagon contracts. Powerus is in talks to acquire Ukrainian drone makers or license their technology for American production, an approach Velicovich described as essential to meeting domestic-manufacture requirements. "There does need to be an American face in front of it or behind it," he told the Journal.

The Trump sons' drone interests extend beyond Powerus. Donald Trump Jr. is a shareholder and advisory board member of Unusual Machines, a drone parts maker. Eric Trump has invested in Israeli drone maker Xtend, which closed a separate $1.5 billion tie-up with Florida-based JFB Construction Holdings last month. Both sons rang the Nasdaq opening bell in August 2025 as they expanded their public market presence in the sector.

The cluster of investments raises conflict-of-interest questions that ethics watchdogs and critics have not let pass quietly. The New Republic framed the Powerus deal as another example of the Trump family profiting from the president's policy priorities, and a large pro-Trump account on X asked pointedly: "Raise your hand if you elected @realDonaldTrump so his kids could make money off of government contracts."

The broader drone market has attracted intense private capital regardless of the Trump family's involvement. Defense technology firms Anduril and Shield AI have seen valuations surge on the back of Pentagon demand, and the war in Ukraine, where dense air-defense systems have made unmanned aerial vehicles a primary tool of warfare, has accelerated both government procurement and private investment globally.

What remains unconfirmed is the financial architecture of the Aureus-Powerus merger: deal valuation, exact ownership stakes held by the Trump sons, and whether Powerus currently holds any active Pentagon contracts or is still working to enter procurement pipelines. Those details will determine whether this is a bet on a policy moment or a business with the manufacturing scale to deliver on its ambitions.