Autonomous Power Corporation, doing business as Powerus, has been selected to compete in the qualifier for Phase II of the U.S. Department of War's Drone Dominance Program with its MatrixFold multi-purpose attack drone, the West Palm Beach, Florida-based company announced this week. With the qualification, Powerus becomes part of the roughly $1 billion Pentagon initiative to procure and field tens of thousands of low-cost, one-way attack drones from American manufacturers.
How Phase II works
According to Powerus, winners of the program will need to demonstrate the ability to produce capable, low-cost and supply-chain-secure small unmanned aircraft systems at scale, enabling the U.S. military to fold those capabilities into future acquisition pathways. After the qualifier, Phase II includes a production and delivery test designed to prove manufacturing readiness, followed by Gauntlet II, a competitive event intended to identify the most capable systems for scaling and fielding. The Gauntlet event concludes with the delivery of sUAS orders to the winners, and Powerus said the Phase II qualifier window is currently estimated for June 2026.
The MatrixFold platform
The Powerus Matrix Series is a U.S.-made line of modular first-person-view platforms designed for rapid deployment across strike, intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance and heavy-payload missions. The systems use lightweight folding airframes for rucksack and vehicle transport and can be configured in seconds around a common operational architecture. The MatrixFold variant is Blue UAS-compatible and NDAA-compliant, the company said.
What company leaders are saying
"The math of war has changed. A thousand-dollar drone can take out a multi-million-dollar target, and whoever can put a combat-ready first-person view in a soldier's hands at scale wins that exchange," said Andrew Valkenburg, executive vice president of technology and manufacturing at Powerus. Brett Velicovich, co-founder of Powerus, added that "Phase II comes down to who shows up with a drone that serves soldiers on the ground through a supply chain the Pentagon can trust."
A planned Nasdaq listing via merger
The Phase II announcement follows Powerus' previously disclosed merger agreement with Aureus Greenway Holdings, Inc. (AGH), a transaction that, if completed, is expected to result in Powerus becoming publicly traded on Nasdaq. AGH has already changed its Nasdaq ticker symbol to PUSA in anticipation of the deal, which the companies expect to close in summer 2026 subject to customary closing conditions including an effective Form S-4 registration statement.
Why it matters
The Drone Dominance Program is part of a broader Pentagon effort to close a long-running U.S. drone manufacturing gap, complementing related capital moves like the administration's reported talks to take equity stakes in U.S. drone startups, the FAA's recent No Drone Zones around FIFA World Cup venues and the wave of defense-AI funding represented by deals like Airis Labs' $60 million raise.
Reporting based on coverage from GlobeNewswire and Powerus.