Eric Trump was given a 6% stake in Space-Eyes, a Miami defense software company moving from maritime surveillance into counter-drone work, in exchange for introductions from his network of contacts, according to a securities filing described by The Wall Street Journal.

The agreement dates to May, when Space-Eyes hired the president’s son as an adviser. It surfaced as the company prepares to go public on Nasdaq through a merger with a blank-check company that values the combined business at $638 million, against roughly $1 million in annual revenue.

It is the fourth drone deal involving the president’s sons that DroneXL has covered since Donald Trump Jr. joined Unusual Machines as an adviser in late 2024.

Space-Eyes Trades Equity For Trump’s Contacts

Space-Eyes founder and CEO Jatin Bains granted Eric Trump a 6% stake in May under an advisory agreement, The Wall Street Journal reports. The agreement asks Trump to facilitate conversations with potential customers, partners, suppliers and other third parties, using his personal and professional connections.

The Journal’s account of the filing has the stake coming from the founder and chief executive, with the agreement built around Trump’s “network of contacts.” That filing is the S-4 registration statement McKinley and Space-Eyes lodged with the SEC on August 12, which EDGAR’s full-text search confirms carries the agreement’s contacts language. The 6% figure is the Journal’s, drawn from that document.

Company executives told Reuters in August that Trump came aboard in the second quarter as Space-Eyes’ third-largest private investor and strategic adviser. He helped introduce potential board candidates but will not sit on the board himself.

The Journal frames the arrangement as part of a wider pattern: the president’s two eldest sons building stakes in small government contractors through investments and advisory work, positioned to benefit from spending and policy decisions made by their father’s administration.

The McKinley Merger Prices Space-Eyes At 370 Times Revenue

The SPAC deal with McKinley Acquisition Corporation values the combined company at $638 million including trust cash. The operating business alone carries a $370 million enterprise value. Space-Eyes generates roughly $1 million in annual revenue today, company executives told Reuters, with about $35 million in contracts under negotiation.

The July 30 business combination agreement pays Space-Eyes shareholders $275 million in stock at $10 per share, with up to 8 million additional earn-out shares tied to milestones. A PIPE financing of senior secured convertible notes is set to deliver $75 million in net proceeds, carrying 10% annual interest and maturing in 2031. The combined company plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker CUAS, the military acronym for counter-drone systems, with closing expected in the fourth quarter and an outside date of April 30, 2027.

The revenue side is thinner. Space-Eyes books $300,000 to $400,000 in existing annual awards, per Reuters, and the roughly $35 million pipeline it describes is spread over five years, with prospects that include government agencies and commercial operators such as cruise lines. Set against the $370 million enterprise value, the company is priced at roughly 370 times its current annual revenue.

The build-out since the announcement has been fast. Space-Eyes named four expected post-merger directors on August 21, among them Jim Reese, a retired Delta Force officer who founded the security firm TigerSwan, and Terry Meguid, who once ran worldwide investment banking at Morgan Stanley. On August 26, the company announced an exclusive option to acquire KMS Solutions, a U.S. Navy submarine engineering services firm, exercisable through December 31 and contingent on the McKinley merger closing. Bains said the combination would “create a stronger defense technology platform.”

The Trump Sons’ Drone Portfolio Keeps Growing

Space-Eyes is at least the fourth drone or counter-drone company tied to the president’s sons since late 2024, after Unusual Machines, Xtend, and Powerus. Bloomberg valued the family’s drone holdings, assembled largely through Texas-based American Ventures, at nearly $750 million in March.

Eric Trump backed XTEND’s $1.5 billion reverse merger with JFB Construction Holdings in February. The Israeli drone maker holds a Defense Department contract for attack systems and said in March it was mobilizing drone fabrication equipment at the request of Israel’s Ministry of Defense, per Bloomberg.

A month later the brothers backed Powerus, which is merging with Aureus Greenway Holdings. (Aureus operated two Florida golf courses before it became a drone company.) Trump Jr.’s Unusual Machines stake dates to late 2024, and the drone parts maker landed a Pentagon contract last October amid ethics concerns DroneXL reported at the time. By March, Bloomberg’s accounting put the family’s drone portfolio near $750 million, and it has only added positions since.

DroneXL’s Take

Access is becoming a line item in American drone-defense valuations. A company with $1 million in revenue does not command a $370 million enterprise value on engineering alone. The 6% Space-Eyes handed Eric Trump prices exactly what his agreement promises: conversations the rest of the industry cannot buy.

Hiring the connected is an old Washington sport, and nothing in the Journal’s reporting suggests this agreement breaks a rule. Space-Eyes may well have real technology; the Navy consortium work and the KMS option are not vapor. But I don’t believe the 370-times-revenue math is about Morpheus, the company’s counter-drone product.

I wrote two weeks ago that the tariff timeline changed my read on the Trump family’s drone investments, after years of treating the conflict-of-interest theory as overcooked. Space-Eyes fits the same shape: a company whose value turns on decisions, from Pentagon drone procurement to the DJI ban and the Section 232 tariffs, made by an administration run by the adviser’s father. The wire coverage treats each deal as a discrete transaction. Add them up and the market is pricing access.

DroneXL has argued for years against competition distorted by Chinese state subsidies. Competition distorted by family proximity to the White House is not an improvement. And the American drone operators paying higher hardware bills under the tariffs are the same people whose tax dollars fund the procurement these valuations are chasing.

The S-4 registration statement that unlocks the shareholder vote went on file August 12. That document, not the press releases, is where the advisory agreement and every insider stake sit on the record, and it is worth reading before the planned fourth-quarter close, with the April 30, 2027 outside date hanging over the deal. What Space-Eyes disclosed there is already saying more than any announcement has.

Sources: The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, SEC EDGAR, GlobeNewswire

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.