One of the best plans for companies to balloon in value in 2026 is to attract one of President Donald Trump’s sons as an investor or advisory-board member, whether that’s military robots (Eric Trump), prediction markets (Donald Trump Jr.), or energy drinks (Barron Trump). Good things, like government contracts or friendly regulation, are following his sons and their friends while Dad runs the country.
Trump Jr.’s business partner Omeed Malik thinks so. In 2022, Malik co-founded an investment firm to put money into firms he thought were being overlooked in a “woke” business environment. (Think: defense contractors, online gun retailers, Tucker Carlson’s media company.) Just after Trump won the 2024 election, Trump Jr. came onboard. Last summer, after taking a company called GrabAGun public, Malik told me that Trump’s “biggest contribution” was “helping us with relationships on the company side. Because you have someone, just like many other firms do, who is well known, a lot of companies know about us and want to do business with us. So that helps us a lot.”
Like, a lot a lot. Two years ago, 1789 Capital managed a few hundred million dollars. Now it is overseeing $3 billion. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that 1789’s investment fund is pulling in returns of nearly 200 percent as of the end of Q2 — a staggering number ten times that of what a healthy venture-capital firm is generating.
