Trump's sons tee up their latest drone deal

In the current U.S. economy, even a golf company can wake up and decide it’s part of the drone industrial base. Aureus Greenway, a golf company backed by Don Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, is merging with Powerus in a deal that turns Florida fairways into a public-markets runway for the domestic-drone boom

Until about five minutes ago, Aureus was a very small, very Florida public company whose actual business was running two golf clubs near Orlando (in Kissimmee Bay and Remington). Its stock began trading on Nasdaq $NDAQ in February 2025. But it just signed a merger agreement with Autonomous Power Corporation, which does business as Powerus, and says the combined company expects to take the name Powerus Corporation and trade under the ticker PUSA if the deal closes as expected this summer. The company’s announcement names Eric and Don Jr. among the “notable investors” in the combined company through American Venture Partners.

Aureus hired Dominari Securities to raise a roughly $9 million private placement (at $3 a share) from investors that include Unusual Machines and Agostinelli Group. Dominari counts Don Jr. and Eric among its shareholders, with roughly 6% stakes each; Don Jr. is on Unusual Machines’ advisory board.

That’s a lot of paper for a company that was just selling tee times and clubhouse sandwiches. Corporate America has produced stranger reinventions. But this isn’t just a diversification play or another case of small-cap America putting on a sexier costume. This is the president’s sons moving deeper into a business the White House has spent months trying to elevate.

In June 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order — “Unleashing American Drone Dominance” — calling on the government to scale up domestic drone production, strengthen the U.S. drone industrial base, and prioritize American-made unmanned aircraft across agencies to the maximum extent allowed by law. Later, the Trump administration barred imports of new models of foreign drones and critical components, while allowing some exemptions through the end of 2026. 

Eric last week called drones “the wave of the future” on social media while praising Xtend, an Israeli drone maker he’s invested in, and saying he was proud of the company’s work “to keep America safe.” Xtend said in November that it had secured a multimillion-dollar contract with the so-called Department of War to develop one-way attack drone kits, and the Iran campaign has made that category rock solid: The Pentagon’s strikes marked the first combat use of one-way drones by the U.S. military. 

Don Jr., meanwhile, joined the advisory board of Unusual Machines in late 2024, and his firm 1789 Capital has also taken a major stake in Anduril, another defense-tech name built around autonomous and unmanned systems. Last August, an SPAC backed by Eric and Don Jr., New America Acquisition I Corp, filed to raise $300 million to target sectors including aerospace, critical minerals, innovation ecosystems, and domestic manufacturing — sectors explicitly tied to national-security themes and public incentives.

So Aureus and Powerus look like the latest stop on a family tour. 

And while the president isn’t explicitly involved in his sons’ deals — his assets are purportedly in a trust managed by his children rather than a traditional blind trust — it’s pretty clear to see how the sons’ expanding drone bets could further entangle the first family’s business interests with an administration that’s actively prioritizing the very thing the family is investing in. 

Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the director of government affairs at the nonpartisan ethics watchdog Project on Government Oversight, told ABC that these deals “at a minimum present the appearance of impropriety,” because the officials making contract decisions know exactly whose relatives are on the cap table.

Powerus, for its part, is trying to sell itself as something much more strategic than a curiosity grafted onto a golf club. The company, formed in 2025 by Andrew Fox, makes heavy-lift drones capable of carrying up to 675 kilograms, and can convert manned boats into remotely operated or fully autonomous vessels. It already counts the Department of Defense as a client. The company’s announcement claims its subsidiaries span heavy-payload unmanned systems, tactical defense platforms, and maritime surveillance. Fox is expected to lead the combined company as CEO and chairman; the value of the merger hasn’t been disclosed.

But because modern capital markets occasionally decide subtlety is overrated, Aureus says its Florida golf properties may keep operating and could serve as “proving grounds” for Powerus precision-agriculture drone systems. Which is to say: The company is asking investors to believe that two Orlando-area golf courses can double as part of a drone-industrial future. The fairways are real. So is the tailwind.