Powerus won a $90 million Air Force contract before its first birthday
Powerus, a drone startup backed financially by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, has grown from $5.7 million in assets into a $300 million enterprise within months. The company secured a $90 million Air Force contract before it turned one and marked its arrival as a public company earlier this month, ringing the opening bell at the Nasdaq stock exchange flanked by family members and cheering partners. It has emerged from a crowded field to snap up multimillion-dollar contracts in the U.S. and overseas.
At the center of the company’s rapid rise is Brett Velicovich, a drone entrepreneur who appeared on Fox News in July 2025 to praise the Trump administration’s plans to invest more than a billion dollars in America’s military drone industry. Moments later, President Trump praised Velicovich on social media, writing that he “really knows his ‘stuff’” and adding, “We are really on our way. MAGA!” Fifteen months later, Velicovich is a top executive at Powerus. He attributed the early success to the business acumen of the company’s founders. “I have never seen another drone company that in their first year in business has been able to do what we’ve done,” Velicovich said in an interview. “You will see us exceed them all.”
Powerus’s most lucrative award came in July 2026, when it received a Defense Department contract worth up to $90 million for drone interceptors and related technology, secured when the company was less than a year old. By August, the Air Force had ordered nearly the entire contract, about $83 million. A month after the award, Powerus said it had beaten defense-tech giant Anduril Industries for a $22 million job defending American oil infrastructure in the Middle East.
Contracting experts described the award process as unusually fast. An Air Force spokeswoman said the orders were not unusual and that Powerus had demonstrated its technology works. Federal contracting records show Powerus was one of 10 companies to bid for the job. Chief Executive Andrew Fox said the contract “might have happened fast” but was won in “the proper way.”
The company’s business has also reached overseas. In September, Velicovich met with Pakistan’s army chief — whom Trump has publicly called his “favorite field marshal” — as part of a deal to sell drones to Pakistan’s forces. Powerus already held a deal with India, Pakistan’s archrival, and has been sought out by heads of state elsewhere, including Lithuania and Iraq.
To ethics experts, Powerus is an example of blurred lines between government and private business in the second Trump administration that are without modern comparison. “Never have we seen a president’s family benefiting from military contracts,” said Richard Painter, a White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush.
Representatives for Powerus and the Trump Organization said the president’s sons have no involvement in the company’s management or operations and play no role in securing business for Powerus. “Outside affiliations, investors, or political connections play absolutely no role in the department’s funding decisions,” a Pentagon spokeswoman said.
Powerus founders said the Trumps are enthusiastic backers of an American manufacturing renaissance. “I’m happy to have them,” said Fox, a Democratic donor without prior defense experience, who added that the Trump backing only helped Powerus get attention. “I don’t call them,” he said of the Trumps. “I don’t ask for favors.” Velicovich said he is focused on the technology and finds the Trump connection a distraction. “There’s just nothing good that comes from commenting on it,” he said.
So far, public-market investors appear skeptical: Powerus stock has declined by about half since it began trading. The company recently authorized a new stock offering that gives several investors the chance to offload shares; American Ventures’ potential sales are currently valued around $7 million. The Trump-backed fund has cashed out at least $6 million from its Powerus investment to date, owns about 3.4% of the company according to a securities filing, and holds warrants that can convert into tens of millions of additional shares. American Ventures sits under Dominari Holdings, the financial firm that helped take Powerus public; the Trump sons each own around 6% of the investment bank, which often merges underperforming publicly traded companies with businesses in buzzy industries.
The company’s leadership includes a public golf-course operator in Florida; sushi restaurateur Michael Sinensky; Fox, who spent three decades running a commercial cleaning service in New York City and dabbled in an online directory of nightlife events and an electric-vehicle charging startup that filed for bankruptcy in 2024; and Roman Vintfeld, a former child-modeling talent scout who has settled claims of defrauding parents. A Powerus representative said the company benefits from founders with “decades of combined experience” across disparate industries.
The founders trace Powerus’s roots to Ukraine. Early in Russia’s 2022 invasion, Velicovich traveled to Lviv, in western Ukraine, where he distributed first-aid kits to soldiers alongside Sinensky and businessman Vintfeld, who were there through a charity. Velicovich, who earlier served in a U.S. Army intelligence unit, stayed in Kyiv for two years brokering drone deals to arm Ukraine. Some Ukrainians welcomed his help at first, but the drones he provided frequently failed on the battlefield, Ukrainian soldiers said. Velicovich said the experience inspired him to start Powerus. “I personally watched ‘American state of the art technology’ just get embarrassed on the battlefield,” he said.
Velicovich, for example, helped Cyberlux, a penny-stock LED lighting company that acquired a drone manufacturing business a month after the war began, sell systems to Ukraine, advising the company and becoming a shareholder alongside Sinensky and Vintfeld. Cyberlux delivered about 20% of the systems before the Ukrainians decided they needed a more capable aircraft and canceled the contract, said Cyberlux Chief Executive Mark Schmidt. The company built the remaining drones and later delivered them to the U.S. government under a different agreement. Vintfeld and Sinensky also ran a Covid-19-era medical supplies company that expanded around 2023 into a business line selling Chinese drones, returning to Ukraine in at least one instance to make a deal.
Before that, Vintfeld owned child acting and modeling-talent agencies accused by attorneys general in New Jersey and Florida of defrauding hundreds of parents. The lawsuits alleged that his employees approached families at shopping malls, complimented parents on their children’s good looks and enticed them to pay up to $1,500 for marketing services that amounted to just photo shoots. The cases settled without Vintfeld admitting wrongdoing. His companies were obligated to pay $22 million in restitution in Florida, where he agreed never to work in entertainment or talent services again. At Powerus, Vintfeld serves as executive vice president of sales and marketing.
The financial woes of a publicly traded Florida golf course company gave Powerus its opening. In July 2025, Dominari’s American Ventures fund led a $26 million investment in the golf company, sending its share price from penny-stock territory to a high of $8; investors considered merging it with a cryptocurrency company, according to a person close to the deal. In December 2025, two months after Powerus was incorporated, a contact introduced Fox to Dominari President Kyle Wool over lunch. Days later, Dominari proposed a merger of the golf company and Powerus, which at the time had no revenue or products, according to legal and securities filings. Powerus quickly acquired three drone businesses, including a small autonomous boat startup Velicovich had separately founded.
Powerus’s pursuit of other government business has suffered setbacks; one of its drones failed a Defense Department competition on the first try this summer. “These competitions are very very difficult, and as a young company sometimes we’re just outmatched,” Fox said. The company is seeking help from contractors to scale its manufacturing — Velicovich has publicly promised Powerus can build drones in 90 seconds — and in some cases has asked contractors to sign nondisparagement agreements, according to people familiar with the matter. Most of Powerus’s revenue so far has come from selling a low-cost drone interceptor design it imported from Ukraine. Velicovich discussed joining the administration as a drone czar with Department of Homeland Security officials but said he turned the role down earlier this year because he didn’t think he could have an impact.