NEOM Largest Investor in Regent Seaglider Series A Investment Round

The new­ly-formed NEOM Invest­ment Fund (NIF) announced this week, it was the largest investor in Regent’s Seaglid­er recent Series A Round, reports a press release. The sum is not dis­closed, although Regent raised USD60 mil­lion from more than 10 dif­fer­ent investor com­pa­nies. NIF has mor­phed out of the pre­vi­ous UAE’s Strate­gic Devel­op­ment Fund. 

The amount posi­tions NEOM, the com­pa­ny behind Sau­di Arabia’s breath­tak­ing and futur­is­tic planned USD500+ bil­lion new region, as the largest con­trib­u­tor to Regent’s A Round, enabling the U.S com­pa­ny to take its tech­nol­o­gy to the next stage. 

Seaglid­ers com­bine the speed of an air­craft with the con­ve­nience of a boat. They float on a hull at the dock, trav­el on wave tol­er­ant hydro­foils in har­bours, and fly with­in one wingspan of the sur­face over open water at speeds of up to 180mph. Regent’s flag­ship seaglid­er, the 12-pas­sen­ger Viceroy, “will offer a one-of-a-kind cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and com­fort.”

The #NEOM Invest­ment Fund has become the largest investor in @REGENTcraft Series A.

The move is part of a mul­ti-year part­ner­ship with the US-based elec­tric seaglid­er man­u­fac­tur­er, which will help us shape the future of water mobil­i­ty in the region.

More: https://t.co/GYTvpsJYN2 pic.twitter.com/MxAdSiH0Df

— NEOM (@NEOM) Octo­ber 25, 2023

Majid Mufti, CEO of NIF, com­ment­ed, “This invest­ment under­scores NEOM’s com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing a test bed for future tech­nol­o­gy that accel­er­ates human progress. We have worked close­ly with NEOM’s mobil­i­ty sec­tor to iden­ti­fy excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, such as this, which can fur­ther NEOM’s goals in line with Sau­di Arabia’s Vision 2030.” 

Ter­ry Wong, NEOM’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Land Mobil­i­ty, added, “Seaglid­ers are an inno­v­a­tive com­po­nent of NEOM Mobility’s aim to build the world’s first tru­ly sus­tain­able, shared, safe, and seam­less mul­ti-modal trans­port sys­tem. They will pro­vide a fresh approach to coastal trans­porta­tion in NEOM, both pas­sen­ger and freight, con­nect­ing key des­ti­na­tions along 468 kilo­me­tres of coast­line.” 

The release states, “The col­lab­o­ra­tion includes a com­mit­ment by Regent to estab­lish a Mid­dle East R&D and Train­ing Hub to sup­port seaglid­er enable­ment as well as infra­struc­ture and oper­a­tional readi­ness. From 2024 onwards, young Sau­di engi­neer­ing and tech grad­u­ates work­ing for NEOM will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty for work place­ments at Regent and learn more about its inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy.  The com­pa­ny will also con­duct on-site test­ing to be ready for oper­a­tional roll-out by the mid-part of the decade.”  

Majid Mufti

Bil­ly Thal­heimer, co-Founder and CEO of Regent, com­ment­ed, “The part­ner­ship is focused on col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly solv­ing oper­a­tional details. NEOM’s goal to build a car­bon-free com­mu­ni­ty through rev­o­lu­tion­ary design is strong­ly aligned with our mis­sion to build sus­tain­able con­nec­tions using seaglid­ers.” 

Octo­ber has been a suc­cess­ful month for Regent. News includes a con­tract with Surf Air to estab­lish a seaglid­er ser­vice in Mia­mi, pro­vid­ing pas­sen­ger trans­port ser­vice for South Flori­da, includ­ing routes from Mia­mi, Fort Laud­erdale, Palm Beach and the Caribbean Islands. This deal is the con­tin­u­a­tion of a long­stand­ing rela­tion­ship between Regent and Surf Air sub­sidiary South­ern Air­ways. The seaglid­ers may be in ser­vice as soon as 2027.

Regent also signed a USD4.75 mil­lion agree­ment with the U.S Marine Corps to demon­strate seaglid­er tech­nol­o­gy in the Lit­torals (a tran­si­tion­al area between uplands and open water). 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.regentcraft.com/

https://www.neom.com/en-us

(Top graph­ic image: Regent)