Regent flies first crewed Seaglider, then raises $240M for production

Regent Craft, founded in 2020 by MIT-trained engineers Billy Thalheimer and Mike Klinker, is building Seagliders — all-electric vessels that float like boats at dock, rise onto hydrofoils as they accelerate, and then fly in ground effect within a wingspan of the water. The founding bet was that coastal routes of roughly 30–180 miles were the mobility gap nobody served: too long and slow for ferries, too short and expensive for aircraft.

Regent deliberately chose its regulator along with its vehicle: because a Seaglider is classified as a maritime vessel, the US Coast Guard — not the FAA — oversees it, sparing the company the aircraft-certification path eVTOL rivals face. A quarter-scale prototype flew in 2022; the $60M Series A in October 2023, then the largest VC round in Rhode Island history, funded the full-scale 12-passenger Viceroy, unveiled in March 2025 with a 55-foot fuselage and 65-foot wingspan.

Sea trials progressed through 2025 and 2026. Regent completed a 255,000-square-foot manufacturing facility at Quonset, Rhode Island in June 2026 and raised a $240M Series B in August 2026 — half equity, half debt, co-led by Mare Liberum and AE Ventures — bringing total capital to roughly $340M, with Founders Fund, Caffeinated Capital and Lockheed Martin Ventures among existing investors. On September 2, 2026, the Viceroy made its first human-crewed flight over Narragansett Bay: two captains aboard, 1,956 feet at about 33 feet for 30 seconds.

That made Viceroy the largest all-electric wing-in-ground-effect craft ever flown with people on board. With the milestone done, Regent says the program enters its final sea-trial phase before production, holding an order book that spans six continents — including a deal with luxury coastal operator The Twenty Five for up to 60 Viceroys and a $15 million US Marine Corps contract — while it continues developing the autonomous Squire drone.