REGENT has raised a $240 million Series B that is only half venture equity — the other half is debt, a structure that says the seaglider maker has stopped raising money to prove a concept and started raising it to run a factory.

The North Kingstown, Rhode Island company announced the round on August 27, 2026, split evenly between $120 million of equity and $120 million of debt arranged by Erebor Bank. It was co-led by Mare Liberum and AE Ventures, with DCVC joining as a new investor and Founders Fund, Caffeinated Capital, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Japan Airlines and Giant Step Capital returning. No valuation was disclosed. Total capital raised now stands at $340 million. One discrepancy worth noting: the VentureTerminal feed lists AE Ventures as sole lead, while the company's own statement and every press account describe the round as co-led with Mare Liberum, and the feed's $240 million figure conflates equity and debt.

What REGENT builds

A seaglider is an all-electric wing-in-ground-effect craft. It floats on its hull at the dock, rises onto retractable hydrofoils to get through harbor chop, then flies within a wingspan of the water at speeds up to 180 mph.

The company was founded in 2020 by MIT aerospace classmates Billy Thalheimer and Mike Klinker, who between them worked at Aurora Flight Sciences, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic before leaving to build a vehicle that answers to maritime regulators rather than the FAA — the design choice that underwrites the whole business case. Two products are in play: Viceroy, the crewed passenger craft, and Squire, an uncrewed variant aimed at logistics and ISR work in contested littoral waters, which has been cleared for testing by the US Coast Guard and is in envelope expansion.

The numbers behind the round

The Series B follows a $60 million Series A in October 2023. On the revenue side, REGENT's US Marine Corps contract for Viceroy has been expanded to $15 million, and the company says its order book spans six continents with several years of manufacturing capacity already booked — though it has not disclosed the unit count or dollar value behind those orders. Production will run out of a newly completed 255,000-square-foot plant. Local coverage calls the raise the largest venture round in Rhode Island history.

Why the timing matters

Debt showing up alongside equity in a hardware round is the tell. Lenders underwrite contracted demand and hard assets, not narrative, so a 50-50 split at this stage implies someone was willing to price REGENT's backlog and factory as collateral. The near-term milestones are correspondingly concrete: first crewed flight of Viceroy, and the start of series production later this year. The investor list also reads defense-first — Lockheed Martin Ventures, Erebor, an expanding Marine Corps contract — which is where the money is currently moving in aviation-adjacent hardware. And while eVTOL peers remain stuck in multi-year FAA certification, REGENT's maritime classification is the one variable that could let it deliver a vehicle to a paying customer first.

Source

AeroTime — "REGENT closes $240 million Series B round from defense-focused investors"