Drone-maker Powerus, backed by Trump brothers, goes public

WASHINGTON — Powerus, a US-based drone company linked to the Trump brothers, became a publicly traded company today.

Powerus announced this morning that it had completed its merger with a subsidiary of Aureus Greenway Holdings Inc., a publicly-traded holding company backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump through their stake in American Ventures.

Powerus will continue as the “surviving entity,” with AGH adopting the former’s name, AGH stated in a news release on Wednesday.

“Completing this transaction puts Powerus in a position to build at the scale our customers are asking for,” Powerus CEO Andrew Fox said a news release today.  “Our focus does not change on October 1. The work is the same work.”

Powerus was founded in October 2025 with the intent of bringing battle-tested Ukrainian drone technologies to the United States. Since then, it has quickly accumulated deals with the Pentagon and international customers, such as a $2.5 million purchase order from the Defense Department for 1,500 first-person view (FPV) drones.

It also includes an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract with the Air Force for its Guardian-2 counter-drone interceptor — a contract vehicle that allows the service to place orders according to its need, with a ceiling value of up to $90 million if all options are executed.

In the realm of international sales, Powerus has booked a “limited procurement order” for drones from Pakistan and is establishing a production site for its Guardian counter-drone system with a local manufacturer in the United Arab Emirates.

The firm’s ties to the Trump family have raised eyebrows among congressional Democrats, with Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., voicing concerns in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this year.

“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,” Warren and Blumenthal said in the March letter.

Blumenthal later cited Powerus’s contracts with the Defense Department as one of the underlying reasons he introduced legislation in September that would levy a 100 percent surtax on income earned by a company owned or controlled by the president or his family members.

Powerus officials have repeatedly denied any conflicts of interest, with its co-founder Brett Velicovich telling The Associated Press in March, “Our focus at the company has nothing to do with politics.”