American Ventures

Overview

Here is what nobody’s coverage of “American Ventures” quite says outright: it is not really a venture capital firm. It is a series of special-purpose vehicles run by management entities of Dominari Securities, the Trump-backed investment bank headquartered in Trump Tower. Dominari disclosed in its own SEC filings that it holds 90% membership interests in American Ventures Management LLC and American Ventures IM LLC, which serve as the management and investment manager of American Ventures LLC; the same filings name Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as advisory-board appointees and 5%-or-more stockholders of Dominari (Financial Times via reprint). The Trump brothers put money into deals through those vehicles — and their spokespeople insist they are passive investors who neither run the funds nor interface with the federal government (MK).

The vehicle is Texas-based, headquartered in Palm Beach, Florida, near the Jupiter Trump National Golf Club — what the Financial Times described as “the Trump brothers’ main business” (MK). As of early April 2026, it managed about $1.04 billion across 21 funds, drawn from family offices and wealthy individuals, investing in small-cap and unlisted companies across drones, virtual assets, and artificial intelligence — plus a long tail that runs from a Florida hair-removal salon chain to Bermuda virtual-asset lenders and nuclear-energy startups (MK).

The drone core: the $750 million headline

The part of American Ventures everyone has heard about is the drone portfolio. Bloomberg reported on March 13, 2026 that the Trump family’s drone investments, held through American Ventures, were worth nearly $750 million across three Florida-based companies — Powerus, Xtend, and Unusual Machines — all pursuing Defense Department contracts under the Pentagon’s “Drone Dominance” initiative, which targets $1.1 billion in drone procurement over two years (DroneXL). The pattern across the three is consistent: a small company with military ambitions, a reverse merger into a microcap shell, and a stated goal of competing for Pentagon procurement (DroneXL).

Powerus is the largest piece — Bloomberg estimated the American Ventures stake at around $400 million (DroneXL). The company, formally Autonomous Power Corporation, was formed in 2025 by U.S. Army Special Operations veterans and is run by CEO Andrew Fox, with co-founder Brett Velicovich, a former Delta Force intelligence analyst who wrote a book called Drone Warrior (Reuters; DroneXL). On March 8, 2026 it signed a reverse-merger agreement with Aureus Greenway Holdings (Nasdaq: AGH), a golf-course operator — reported by Reuters the next day — under which existing Powerus shares convert to AGH stock at a 599.18229-to-1 ratio and the combined company operates as Powerus Corporation, seeking a Nasdaq listing under the ticker PUSA (Reuters; DroneXL). Dominari Securities was engaged to help raise about $9 million in financing from investors including Unusual Machines and the Agostinelli Group, with a separate $50 million committed stock purchase from the Seoul-based Korea Climate & Governance Improvement Fund; the merger was expected to close in summer 2026 (Reuters).

The shell it merged with was a Trump-family-linked vehicle already: Aureus Greenway, a West Palm Beach golf-course company, was itself backed by the brothers, and American Ventures accumulated a position the month after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled the Pentagon’s drone focus in July 2025; by the time the Powerus merger was announced, its shares had climbed from below $1 to $5.48 (DroneXL). Shares surged as much as 55% on the merger news (DroneXL).

Powerus makes heavy-lift drones able to carry industrial payloads up to 675 kg and offers services to convert manned boats into remotely operated or autonomous vessels (Reuters). Its stated ambition is to build 10,000 drones a month — a figure that deserves context: the entire U.S. industry produces an estimated 100,000 drones a year, or roughly 8,300 a month across all manufacturers combined, making the target a bet on future delivery rather than a reflection of current capacity (DroneXL).

The Xtend deal came first. In February 2026, 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 (DroneXL). Bloomberg estimated the American Ventures stake at roughly $340 million (DroneXL). Xtend holds a “multi-million-dollar” Defense Department contract for attack systems, keeps its U.S. headquarters in Tampa near U.S. Central Command, and said in March 2026 it had begun mobilizing drone-fabrication equipment at the request of Israel’s Ministry of Defense (DroneXL).

Unusual Machines is where it started. Donald Trump Jr. came on as an adviser in November 2024 — also serving as a shareholder — and his stake was worth more than $7 million as of December 2024 per securities filings (Reuters; DroneXL). The Orlando drone-components company subsequently won its largest Pentagon contract — a deal to supply 3,500 drone motors and components to the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, with another 20,000 units expected to follow — and both Trump Jr.’s representatives and the company told Bloomberg he played no role in securing the award (DroneXL). The overlap is now circular: Unusual Machines is an investor in Powerus, and Powerus is also a customer of Unusual Machines, with Trump Jr. holding shares in both (DroneXL).

The policy backdrop behind all three is the administration’s drone push: a June 2025 “Unleashing American Drone Dominance” executive order, a July 2025 memo from Hegseth reclassifying small drones as “consumable” supplies that field commanders can buy directly, and a December 2025 ban on new Chinese-made drones and components — with the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance initiative targeting hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made systems by 2027 and the Army’s stated goal at 340,000 drones (DroneXL; DroneXL).

The machine underneath: how a deal actually flows

The Skyline Builders chain, documented by the Financial Times, is the clearest worked example of American Ventures in motion. In August 2025, Skyline disclosed a private placement that raised about $17.8 million and left Quantum Leap Energy with voting control; Dominari Securities was one of the placement agents (Financial Times via reprint). The FT reported that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump bought into Skyline that month through American Ventures — “a special purpose vehicle run by a Dominari subsidiary” — and added to the position on October 28, 2025; SEC filings independently establish the financing dates and identify American Ventures series exposure tied to those placements, though the filings leave the brothers unnamed (Financial Times via reprint).

On October 31, 2025, Skyline agreed to pay $20 million for an approximate 20% membership interest in a Delaware LLC that the FT identified as Kaz Resources, tied to Cove Capital and Cove Kaz; on April 30, 2026, Skyline and Cove Kaz announced a transaction agreement to combine as Kaz Resources Inc., expected to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker KAZR if completed (Financial Times via reprint). The underlying asset is a Kazakhstan tungsten venture — the Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty deposits — in which Cove Kaz would hold 70% alongside the Kazakh national mining company (Financial Times via reprint). Tungsten is a strategic defense metal, and the U.S. Export-Import Bank issued a letter of interest for up to $900 million while the International Development Finance Corporation issued letters of interest exploring up to $700 million in debt financing and project-development funding — conditional maximums, not binding commitments (Financial Times via reprint). The FT itself stated there was no suggestion the brothers knew Cove was close to securing U.S. administration backing when they first invested, or that they influenced the award (Financial Times via reprint).

Beyond drones: the MMA lifeline

American Ventures’ playbook travels outside defense too. On December 29, 2025, Donald Trump Jr. injected $3 million into the Mixed Martial Arts Group (NYSE: MMA), a Conor McGregor-linked company, through American Ventures LLC — the investment took the form of 4,285,714 shares of preferred stock at 70 cents per share, with Dominari Securities serving as exclusive placement agent and American Ventures LLC securing rights to purchase up to $20 million in additional shares over time (Calfkicker). Trump Jr. had joined the company as a strategic advisor the previous September, a move that temporarily doubled the stock price in premarket trading (Calfkicker). The company reported just $358,000 in annual revenue against a $16.17 million market capitalization, and its plans center on a Web3/Solana “Get Paid to Train” token ecosystem (Calfkicker).

The ethics frame, both sides

The vehicle’s proximity to presidential power is the reason it gets covered. Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, told Bloomberg: “While drones are hot, and the US needs more companies, it’s not clear how many will be sustainable” (DroneXL). Both Trump brothers hold roughly 6% stakes each in Dominari — which makes the investment bank raising the money, the advisory roles, and the portfolio companies all part of one orbit (Reuters). The FT reported that Dominari counted the brothers as advisory-board members from February 2025, with the brothers jointly holding about 12% of their Dominari stake per a regulatory filing — consistent with the ~6%-each figure (MK; Reuters).

The other side’s defense is on the record and consistent: officials for both brothers describe them as passive investors of American Ventures with no operational role; Don Jr.’s spokesperson says he doesn’t interface with the federal government as part of his role with any company he invests in or advises; a White House spokeswoman said there were no conflicts of interest (MK; Financial Times via reprint). The FT, in the same investigation that traced the Skyline chain, noted there was no suggestion of knowledge or influence — a caveat that belongs next to the headline number (Financial Times via reprint).

What this profile does not claim

It does not conflate American Ventures LLC with the Texas real-estate firm American Ventures led by Shravan Parsi — a distinct company in the same name — nor with American Ventures Acquisition Corp. I, the Florida blank-check company incorporated December 29, 2025 with a planned $100 million IPO, whose relationship to the Trump-linked vehicle is unverified. It does not state the brothers’ individual ownership percentages of American Ventures itself, which filings do not disclose at the vehicle level. It treats Bloomberg’s $750 million as an estimate of paper value and the $1.04 billion fund total as reported from regulator documents via the Financial Times — not as audited figures. It does not assert that the Skyline–Cove Kaz combination will close or that the EXIM and DFC letters of interest will convert into binding financing. And it does not assert that anyone secured a government contract through political influence — the Unusual Machines contract was the one case directly addressed, and both the company and Trump Jr.’s representatives told Bloomberg he played no role in it.