REGENT Raises $240M Series B for Seaglider Production

REGENT Craft's new capital already has a factory waiting for it in Rhode Island. The company raised a $240M Series B on August 27, 2026, with the capital split equally between equity and debt. Mare Liberum and AE Ventures co-led the round, while Erebor Bank supplied the debt financing for the industrial work required to build, certify, and deliver Seaglider vessels.

The Rhode Island company has completed a 255,000-square-foot manufacturing facility before its full-scale Viceroy passenger prototype has completed its first human flight. REGENT says multiple years of capacity are booked, its commercial order book exceeds $10B, and its U.S. Marine Corps contract has expanded to $15M. Those figures describe company-reported demand and contracted work, not recognized revenue, and the factory now has to convert that interest into certified vessels.

The official Series B announcement brings REGENT to $340M raised across equity and debt. No valuation was disclosed. For founders Billy Thalheimer and Michael Klinker, the financing moves the company into a stage where manufacturing cadence, certification evidence, and customer delivery matter as much as an engineering breakthrough.

REGENT's Series B pairs venture risk with industrial debt

REGENT's financing is an equal mix of equity and debt, a distinction that changes how the round should be read. The equity co-leads are Mare Liberum, an investor focused on maritime technology and national security, and AE Ventures, the venture platform of AE Industrial Partners. Erebor Bank supplied the debt, while new investor DCVC joined existing backers including Founders Fund, Caffeinated Capital, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Japan Airlines, and Giant Step Capital.

That investor set mirrors REGENT's dual-use market. Commercial customers are evaluating Seagliders for passenger travel, cargo, and offshore logistics; defense customers are evaluating the same core vehicle architecture for contested logistics, search and rescue, surveillance, and other maritime missions. A mixed capital stack gives REGENT more room to fund both the uncertain work of certification and the tangible machinery of production without pretending those jobs carry identical risk.

The company says the $240M will support manufacturing scale-up, certification milestones, the first human flight of the full-scale Viceroy prototype, and continued work across commercial and defense programs. The money creates capacity to attempt those milestones. It does not supply a disclosed valuation, guarantee certification, or turn a booked order into a delivered vessel.

A completed factory changes the operating question

REGENT's Seaglider concept combines three modes of maritime operation: float on the hull, rise onto hydrofoils, and fly in ground effect above the water. The all-electric Viceroy is designed to carry 12 passengers at speeds up to 180 mph across routes up to 180 miles. REGENT's autonomous Squire platform takes the same float, foil, and fly logic into a smaller defense-oriented vehicle.

The engineering idea has progressed beyond a rendering. REGENT flew a quarter-scale demonstrator in 2022, began full-scale Viceroy sea trials in 2025, and reported a successful flight of the autonomous Squire in 2026. The full-scale Viceroy's first human flight remains ahead, however, and the U.S. Coast Guard certification pathway still has to translate test evidence into permission for commercial operation.

The new Rhode Island facility raises the cost of being almost ready. A 255,000-square-foot plant can house component manufacturing, final assembly, and pre-delivery testing, but square footage does not produce learning curves by itself. REGENT now has to establish supplier reliability, quality control, trained labor, repeatable assembly, and testing discipline while its flagship passenger platform is still advancing through technical and regulatory gates.

Commercial orders and defense contracts pull from both sides

REGENT reports more than $10B in commercial orders across six continents and says multiple years of manufacturing capacity are booked. The company also reports an expanded $15M U.S. Marine Corps contract for the Viceroy platform and growing military interest in Squire. These signals help explain why maritime-specialist capital, aerospace investors, and an industrial bank arrived in the same round.

The commercial thesis is straightforward enough to draw on a map. Coastal cities often sit close together in miles and far apart in travel time because roads, ferries, airports, and bridges push passengers through indirect routes. Seagliders are designed to use existing waterfront infrastructure and combine boat-like access with aircraft-like speed, opening a potential lane between conventional ferries and regional aviation.

Defense demand changes the operating standard. A commercial passenger can tolerate a schedule change more easily than a unit waiting on contested logistics, medical evacuation, or maritime surveillance. The dual-use model expands REGENT's market, but it also requires the company to satisfy different buyers, mission profiles, procurement systems, and reliability expectations without letting one roadmap turn the other into a side project.

The next proof is repeatable production and delivery

REGENT enters this round with a factory, a broad investor base, company-reported demand, and founders who have taken the technology through several physical test stages. Billy Thalheimer, co-founder and CEO, is responsible for the company's commercial and production transition; Michael Klinker, co-founder and CTO, leads the technology behind the vehicle programs. Their job is shifting from proving that Seaglider physics work to proving that a manufacturing organization can reproduce the result.

The milestones remain concrete. Viceroy must complete its first full-scale human flight, certification work must continue with the Coast Guard and other regulators, manufacturing equipment and processes must come online, and customer deliveries must begin. REGENT currently expects first deliveries in late 2027, which should be treated as a company target rather than a guaranteed schedule.

The $240M Series B gives REGENT enough financial weight to make the next failures expensive and the next successes operationally meaningful. The company's future will be measured less by the size of a reported order book than by the movement of finished vessels through the Rhode Island factory, into certified service, and onto the coastal routes and maritime missions that have already been promised a place in the production queue.