By Annie Massa and Aaron Kirchfeld, Bloomberg
President Donald Trump’s eldest sons are investing in a new drone company, expanding their defense portfolio at a moment when the Pentagon is ramping up its own spending on unmanned aircraft systems.
Powerus, a West Palm Beach, Florida-based business, said Monday that it will go public in a deal backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. The company plans to combine with a Nasdaq-listed golf course operator, Aureus Greenway Holdings Inc., according to a statement.
Shares of Aureus Greenway jumped as much as 24% in New York on Monday, and were up 12% to $5.47 at 11:23 a.m.
The boutique investment bank Dominari Holdings Inc., which has worked on other Trump family transactions in drones and cryptocurrencies, advised. The Korea Climate & Governance Improvement Fund invested $50 million in the deal, which was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.
Brett Velicovich, co-founder of Powerus, said in an interview that going public would help the company pursue new acquisitions and expand on the businesses it owns: Kaizen Aerospace, Tandem Defense and Agile Autonomy.
“America had been losing the drone race for a while to countries like China,” said Velicovich, a US Army special operations veteran who wrote a book called Drone Warrior. “That era is over. We’re entering the era of American drone dominance.”
The move adds to other recent drone investments for the first family. Last month Eric Trump backed a $1.5 billion deal to take an Israeli firm that builds such tactical aircraft, Xtend, public in a merger with a Nasdaq-listed construction company. A third drone parts company called Unusual Machines Inc. backed both the Xtend and Powerus deals. Trump Jr. has been an adviser to Unusual Machines since 2024, and invested in the company.
The new deals come as the Department of Defense is working to increase its drone purchases, with a $1.1 billion initiative to procure hundreds of thousands of them by 2027, and build up an American manufacturing base for the systems.
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