Regent Raises USD60 Million Via Series ‘A’ Funding Round For Development of Viceroy Electric Seaplane

Regent Craft, a Rhode Island-based man­u­fac­tur­er of elec­tric seaglid­ers, announced last week the com­pa­ny has raised USD60 mil­lion via a Series ‘A’ Fund­ing Round.

Co-led by 8090 Indus­tries and Founders Fund with par­tic­i­pa­tion from Japan Air­lines Inno­va­tion Fund as well as Point 72 Ven­tures, the mon­ey will be used towards Regent’s Viceroy full-scale pro­to­type build and test pro­gram with the aim of crewed flight in 2024. This lat­est invest­ment keeps the com­pa­ny on track for full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, sup­port­ed by the U.S Coast Guard and oth­er glob­al mar­itime author­i­ties, as well as seaglid­er man­u­fac­ture. 

The new finance brings the total fund­ing, so far, to USD90 mil­lion. Ear­li­er invest­ments include Japan Air­lines Inno­va­tion Fund, Lock­heed Mar­tin, UAE’s Strate­gic Devel­op­ment Fund and Yam­a­to Hold­ings.

The release explains, “Seaglid­ers are a new mode of trans­porta­tion that enables fast, afford­able, zero-emis­sion trav­el along coastal routes. Cou­pling advanced tech­nolo­gies from hydro-foil­ing water­craft and elec­tric avi­a­tion, seaglid­ers oper­ate like a boat at docks and in har­bours, take off from wave-tol­er­ant hydro­foils, and fly with­in one wingspan of the sur­face over open water. They reach cruise speeds up to 180 mph while trav­el­ing up to 180 miles on a sin­gle charge.” 

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Bil­ly Thal­heimer, co-founder and CEO of Regent, com­ment­ed, “8090 Indus­tries and Founders Fund are the per­fect investors to lead this round, bring­ing a deep bench of indus­tri­al titans focused on sus­tain­abil­i­ty, aero­space, and defence that will sup­port scal­ing Regent’s glob­al foot­print.”

Kerem Ozmen, co-Founder and CEO of 8090 Indus­tries, added, ”Our two invest­ment pil­lars are sus­tain­abil­i­ty and aero­space and defence, and Regent falls per­fect­ly in the inter­sec­tion. With about a quar­ter of the planet’s CO2 emis­sions com­ing from trans­porta­tion, and with the sec­tor grow­ing faster than any oth­er, the time to act with new tech­nolo­gies is now.”

The release con­tin­ues, “Seaglid­ers are pur­pose-built to serve coastal com­mu­ni­ties, a large but under-addressed mar­ket seg­ment that the com­pa­ny esti­mates to be worth USD25 bil­lion by 2030. Regent’s flag­ship seaglid­er, Viceroy, will car­ry 12 pas­sen­gers with exist­ing bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy, while its vision prod­uct, Monarch, is to hold 100 pas­sen­gers on routes of up to 500 miles.” 

Delian Asparouhov, part­ner at Founders Fund, remarked, “Regent is a text­book exam­ple of the type of ambi­tious tech­nolo­gies we need to grow the U.S indus­tri­al base and today we’re dou­bling down on our com­mit­ment to their vision.”

Graph­ic Image of Viceroy Inte­ri­or (Cred­it: Regent)

Regent has secured a com­mer­cial order book for over 500 seaglid­ers rep­re­sent­ing more than USD8 bil­lion from glob­al air­line and fer­ry cus­tomers includ­ing Mesa Air­lines, Brit­tany Fer­ries, and FRS, show­ing the mul­ti-sec­tor inter­est for the sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty prod­uct. The com­pa­ny recent­ly announced that South­ern Air­ways will take deliv­ery of the first pro­duc­tion Viceroy, which will oper­ate under their Mokulele Air­lines brand.

In addi­tion to pas­sen­ger trav­el, seaglid­ers sup­port mul­ti­ple-mis­sion-sets such as car­go trans­port, search and res­cue, off­shore logis­tics, and defence appli­ca­tions, which fur­ther expand the company’s cus­tomer base and mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties.

Regent demon­strat­ed this unique “float, foil, fly” mis­sion with a sub­scale pro­to­type in 2022, mark­ing the first time a vehi­cle has suc­cess­ful­ly com­bined the wave tol­er­ance of a foil with the speed of a wing.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.regentcraft.com/

(Top image: Regent ‘Viceroy’ Pro­to­type — Cred­it: Regent)