Trump Family’s Drone Portfolio Reaches $750 Million as Pentagon Scales Up Procurement

Bloomberg has put a dollar figure on what we’ve been tracking for months: the Trump family’s drone investment portfolio, held through a Texas-based firm called American Ventures, is worth nearly $750 million across three Florida-based companies, all of which are pursuing Defense Department contracts. The report, published March 13, offers the most complete accounting to date of how the portfolio was assembled.

• The Portfolio: American Ventures — a firm that lists Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump among its backers — holds stakes in three drone companies: Powerus, Xtend, and Unusual Machines, with combined paper value near $750 million.
• The Context: All three companies are pursuing Defense Department contracts under the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance initiative, which targets $1.1 billion in drone procurement over the next two years.
• The Structure: Both Powerus and Xtend are going public via reverse mergers with small Nasdaq-listed Florida shell companies. Bloomberg documents the timeline of American Ventures’ stake accumulation and the share price movements of those shells in detail.
• The Source: Bloomberg, reporting by Annie Massa and Tom Maloney, March 13, 2026.

Three Deals, One Consistent Structure

The Trump family’s drone exposure follows a recognizable pattern across all three investments: a small company with military ambitions, a reverse merger into a microcap shell, and a stated goal of competing for Pentagon procurement contracts. Bloomberg’s reporting describes how all three fit together.

Powerus, co-founded by Brett Velicovich — a former Delta Force intelligence analyst who wrote a book called Drone Warrior — is merging with Aureus Greenway Holdings, a company that operated two Florida golf courses until recently. Aureus shares traded below $1 for months. After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled the Pentagon’s drone focus last July, the stock rose. American Ventures accumulated a position the following month. By the time the Powerus merger was announced this month, shares had reached $5.48, per Bloomberg, which estimates American Ventures’ Powerus stake at around $400 million.

We covered the Powerus reverse merger in detail on March 9, noting that Velicovich’s stated target of 10,000 drones per month is an ambitious figure given that the entire U.S. industry currently produces an estimated 100,000 units per year across all manufacturers combined. The Unusual Machines connection adds another layer: that company is both a Powerus investor and a Powerus customer, with Trump Jr. holding shares in both.

The Xtend deal came first. As we reported in February, Eric Trump backed Israeli AI drone maker Xtend in a $1.5 billion reverse merger with JFB Construction Holdings — a Nasdaq-listed contractor that moved from building gym locations to autonomous combat drones. Xtend holds a “multi-million-dollar” Defense Department contract for attack systems and keeps its U.S. headquarters in Tampa, near US Central Command, per Bloomberg. This month, the company said it started mobilizing drone fabrication equipment at the request of Israel’s Ministry of Defense.

Bloomberg estimates the American Ventures stake in Xtend at roughly $340 million.

Unusual Machines Is the Earliest Trump Drone Investment

Unusual Machines is where this started. Trump Jr. came on as an adviser after the 2024 election. His stake in the company was worth more than $7 million as of December 2024, per Bloomberg’s reporting on a securities filing. The company subsequently won its largest Pentagon contract — a deal to supply 3,500 drone motors and components to the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, with another 20,000 units expected to follow. Unusual Machines and Trump Jr.’s representatives both told Bloomberg he played no role in securing the award.

Unusual Machines is now an investor in Powerus, while Powerus is also a customer of Unusual Machines. We first noted the structure of Trump Jr.’s drone investments in July 2025, when the portfolio was still taking shape.

The Pentagon’s Drone Dominance Initiative Is Driving Demand

The Drone Dominance initiative aims to arm U.S. forces with hundreds of thousands of unmanned aircraft. Gauntlet I of that program concluded recently, with 11 companies receiving orders for up to $150 million worth of one-way attack drones. Xtend was not among them. Powerus did not participate in Phase I, though Velicovich told Bloomberg the company is “paying very close attention” to subsequent rounds.

The Army’s stated goal is 340,000 drones. The gap between that figure and current domestic manufacturing capacity is large, which is why analysts and investors are watching the procurement pipeline closely.

Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, offered perspective to Bloomberg. “While drones are hot, and the US needs more companies, it’s not clear how many will be sustainable,” she said.

Eric Trump and a spokesman for Trump Jr. declined to comment to Bloomberg. The Defense Department did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

DroneXL’s Take

Bloomberg’s $750 million figure is the most complete accounting yet of what the Trump family has built in the drone space since November 2024. I’ve covered each piece separately — the Powerus roll-up, the Xtend merger, the Unusual Machines Army contract — and what Bloomberg has done is place all three on one page and show the total.

The production numbers are worth watching regardless of who owns what. A company valued at hundreds of millions before a single major contract is won is a bet on future delivery. Velicovich’s background is credible, and adapting battle-tested Ukrainian drone designs for U.S. manufacturing is a legitimate defense strategy. Whether these companies can execute at scale is a question that only contract performance will answer.

Pettyjohn’s caution is worth keeping in mind. The U.S. needs capable domestic drone suppliers, and the Pentagon is spending real money to build that supply chain. Which companies turn today’s valuations into sustained production capacity is the story worth following from here.

My expectation: within 18 months of Powerus listing on Nasdaq, the company will announce a Pentagon contract. When that happens, this portfolio will move from the financial press into wider public conversation.

Editorial Note: AI tools were used to assist with research and archive retrieval for this article. All reporting, analysis, and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.