A drone company that counts Donald Trump Jr. as an advisory board member received an immediate boost after a report revealed that the Trump administration is seeking a major funding deal with the firm.
Unusual Machines, a Florida-based drone parts maker in which President Donald Trump’s eldest son is a major investor holding millions of dollars’ worth of shares, is among the companies the government hopes to strike deals with, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
By the following morning, shares in Unusual Machines had surged 27 percent before climbing as high as 39 percent in premarket trading. As noted by the Journal in a follow-up article, the company’s share price of $26.30 would mark a record high if the gains carried over into the market open.
The soaring share price came even though no deal between Pete Hegseth’s Defense Department and Unusual Machines has been confirmed.
This is not even the first time companies with strong ties to the president’s children have benefited from administration contracts.
In March, Aureus Greenway, a golf club company on whose board Trump Jr. and his brother Eric serve, announced it would merge with defense company Powerus. Just weeks later, Powerus announced it would sell interceptor drones to the Pentagon amid the war in Iran.
Brett Velicovich, the company’s co-founder and president, denied that the administration considered the Trump brothers’ ties to the company before striking the deal.
“They’re not going to pick a system because of who’s on an investor list,” he told Bloomberg. “They’re picking because they need it now.”
Earlier this year, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, and Andy Kim demanded that Hegseth explain the potential “conflicts of interest” surrounding the awarding of multiple lucrative Defense Department contracts and loans to companies associated with Trump Jr.
That includes venture capital firm 1789 Capital backing a startup that produces magnets used in drone systems, which reportedly received a record-breaking $620 million loan from the DoD’s Office of Strategic Capital.
Other drone companies the Pentagon is reportedly seeking funding deals with include Performance Drone Works and Neros Technologies, according to the Journal.
The proposed agreements are part of the Pentagon’s $1 billion Drone Dominance program, which aims to dramatically expand U.S. drone capabilities and produce around 300,000 unmanned systems.
“We now find ourselves in a new era. An era of cheap, disposable battlefield drones,” Hegseth said in a December 2025 announcement of the initiative. “We cannot be left behind. We must invest in inexpensive, unmanned platforms that have proved so effective.
“We cannot afford to shoot down cheap drones with $2 million missiles, and we ourselves must be able to field large quantities of capable attack drones.”
A Defense Department official told the Daily Beast: “We will not comment on leaked documents, rumored internal discussions, or the specifics of pre-decisional matters that remain subject to change. Any final decision from the Department will be shared in a formal announcement at a later date.”
A spokesperson for Unusual Machines declined to comment.
