Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are backers of Powerus, a Florida-based drone maker that, the AP reported on April 2, 2026, was pitching its defensive drone interceptors to Gulf countries under attack by Iran. Co-founder Brett Velicovich told the AP the company was doing “many demos across the Middle East right now for our interceptors.” The AP noted that the brothers' deal could give them sizable equity stakes, and that their father, as commander in chief, launched the strikes with Israel that began the war and created the Gulf states' need for protection.
Powerus, founded by U.S. Army Special Operations veterans, had recently raised $60 million and announced in March a merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed Florida golf-course operator that the brothers back through their firm American Ventures, as a way to go public. The AP reported the company had its sights on $1.1 billion the Pentagon set aside to build up U.S. production of armed drones after the administration banned Chinese drone imports. Eric Trump said in a statement, “I am incredibly proud to invest in companies I believe in. Drones are clearly the wave of the future.”
Former Bush White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter told the AP, “These countries are under enormous pressure to buy from the sons of the president so he will do what they want.” Velicovich denied any conflict: “We are at war, my friend, we are in an arms race and America will lose if we don't build fast.”
On April 30, Bloomberg reported, citing the company, that the U.S. Air Force had agreed to buy an undisclosed number of Powerus interceptor drones after a demonstration in Arizona. Velicovich told Bloomberg, “They're not going to pick a system because of who's on an investor list.” The New Republic noted that Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology counts at least 187 U.S. drone makers, and reported, citing the Financial Times, that the same week another Trump-brothers vehicle, Skyline Builders, agreed to merge with Cove Kaz Capital, a U.S.-government-backed Kazakhstan tungsten venture.
Update (October 2, 2026): On August 4, Powerus announced that its subsidiary Tandem Defense had won a competitively bid Air Force indefinite-delivery contract for aerial-denial drones with a ceiling of $90 million through mid-2028; the company said the ceiling is not a guaranteed amount. Breaking Defense reported that Powerus also holds a $2.5 million Defense Department order for 1,500 FPV drones and is setting up a production site for its Guardian counter-drone system in the United Arab Emirates. The merger with Aureus Greenway closed and Powerus became a publicly traded company on October 1. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in March that the involvement of the president's children “cast a cloud of corruption and conflict of interest over any DoD contracts that this company may receive.”
Correction (October 2, 2026): An earlier version dated the AP report to April 5, named Saudi Arabia and the UAE as demonstration sites, described the merger partner as “Trump-owned,” and said Powerus completed its reverse merger in March. The AP report ran April 2 and said only “several Gulf countries”; the merger partner is a company the brothers back through American Ventures; and the merger was announced in March and closed October 1. Those details and the date were corrected, and the title was rewritten to state the facts without the earlier opinion framing.