The Electric Seaglider Factory Is Open: Inside REGENT’s 255,000-Square-Foot Bet on Flying Boats

On October 1, 2026, more than 600 investors, defense officials, and suppliers boarded ferries on Narragansett Bay to watch an aircraft do something no comparably sized battery-electric plane can. REGENT Craft’s full-scale Viceroy prototype rose onto its hydrofoils, climbed clear of the water, and flew, in ground effect, just feet above the bay. It was the vehicle’s fifth test flight, and the first time the public had seen it fly live.

The demo was the centerpiece of Demo Day at 1 Seaglider Way in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, the official opening of the world’s first Seaglider Manufacturing Facility. The 255,000-square-foot building at Quonset Business Park is REGENT’s move from prototyping to serial production. It comes with a $240 million Series B funding round announced in August 2026, co-led by Mare Liberum and AE Ventures with debt from Erebor Bank, bringing total capital raised to $340 million. And on the same day, the company announced a $5 million Phase IV extension of its U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Lab contract, bringing that partnership’s total value to $19.25 million.

“We proved the technology and the demand; now we build,” said Billy Thalheimer, co-founder and CEO, at the opening. “With $340 million raised to date and 1 Seaglider Way officially open, we’re moving from prototype to production and putting Seaglider vessels in customers’ hands.” Thalheimer founded the company with fellow MIT graduate Mike Klinker.

What a seaglider actually is

A seaglider is a wing-in-ground-effect craft, a vehicle that flies but stays within about a wingspan’s height above the water. When a wing flies that close to a surface, the air pressure buildup underneath cuts induced drag dramatically, roughly halving the energy needed to stay aloft. The Soviets built giant versions of these machines in the Cold War. REGENT’s version adds hydrofoils and batteries.

The Viceroy runs three modes. It floats on its hull at the dock like a boat. As it accelerates, retractable hydrofoils lift the hull out of the water, the way an America’s Cup foiling yacht does, so it no longer drags through the waves. Then it lifts into ground effect and cruises at 180 mph, all-electric, with a promised 180 miles of range on a single charge and zero operating emissions. The 12-passenger Viceroy targets routes where that envelope is perfect: harbor-to-harbor hops too short to fly and too slow to drive, like Boston to New York or Miami to the Bahamas.

The physics is the product strategy. Batteries store roughly 40 times less energy per kilogram than jet fuel, which is why most electric aircraft are stuck below 200 miles of range. The seaglider does not try to beat that chemistry. It flies low enough to need far less energy per mile, and because electric motors have reduced heat and infrared signatures compared with turbines, the military finds the quiet, low-observable flight profile interesting for its own reasons.

A factory, not a prototype

The building matters more than any single flight. REGENT plans to scale to rate production of 75 Viceroy vessels and 300 Squire seaglider drones per year, with the first customer Viceroy deliveries targeted for late 2027.

The timeline was fast by manufacturing standards. The final structural beam went in on November 14, 2025, the company announced the building’s completion at the Reindustrialize conference in Detroit on June 16, 2026, and by September 30 it was officially open. The location is a deliberate choice: Quonset Business Park has a deep defense-manufacturing and maritime legacy, and REGENT says Rhode Island’s skilled shipbuilding workforce was a major factor. The company has pledged to create up to 750 jobs over the next decade and says it has already reinvested $71.5 million into the local economy.

The seaglider’s trick is not better batteries. It is staying close enough to the water to cheat the physics of flight.

The Marines just paid for more

The defense side of the story is moving as fast as the commercial one. The $5 million Phase IV extension, announced October 1, focuses on demonstrating the full-scale Viceroy prototype in operationally relevant conditions and integrating seagliders into military command-and-control systems. The evaluated missions are expeditionary logistics and over-water transport: moving personnel and equipment quickly in contested maritime regions without relying on runways.

That last point is the military pitch. A seaglider needs no runway, no vertiport, no ground infrastructure at all, just open water. For island chains and littoral zones where runways are targets, that is a capability nothing else in the inventory offers at this speed and cost. REGENT’s autonomous Squire drone, the smaller sibling of the Viceroy, recently completed a demonstration at Silent Swarm, a military experimentation event sponsored by defense research leadership, and the factory’s 300-per-year Squire rate suggests the drone is expected to be the high-volume product.

The contract trajectory tells the story: what the company describes as beginning as a feasibility question has grown through four phases to $19.25 million, with defense officials attending Demo Day alongside commercial customers.

The regulatory shortcut nobody else gets

Here is the detail that makes REGENT’s late-2027 delivery target plausible while electric air taxi companies grind through years of FAA type certification: because seagliders operate exclusively over water, they fall under maritime jurisdiction rather than aviation regulations. There is no five-stage FAA certification marathon. The vessels are regulated as boats that fly low, not aircraft that float, which collapses the approval timeline.

That shortcut comes with its own caveats. Maritime certification frameworks for this category are still being shaped, and coast guard and port authorities will set the operating rules. But the commercial market has already voted with paper: REGENT says its order book is valued at $10 billion across six continents, with named customers and partners including Ocean Flyer in New Zealand, Japan Airlines, and the ferry operator Hornblower. The ribbon-cutting drew JAL’s Kamio Ao and Hornblower CEO Stephen Edwards, along with U.S. Representative Gabe Amo and retired Admiral Butch Dollaga.

What comes next

The factory is the inflection point. The next twelve months will be about tooling, hiring, and sea trials at Quonset: proving that a wing-in-ground-effect craft, a category that defeated every previous attempt at commercialization, can be built on something resembling an assembly line. Watch three things. First, whether the Viceroy’s flight test campaign accelerates now that a waterfront test operation sits next to the factory. Second, whether the Squire drone’s defense interest converts into orders at the 300-per-year rate the plant is designed for. Third, whether maritime regulators formalize the certification path fast enough to hold the late-2027 delivery date.

REGENT’s bet is that electric aviation’s hardest problems, battery energy density and aircraft certification, can be sidestepped rather than solved. The factory at 1 Seaglider Way is where that argument gets tested at industrial scale.

References

AirPro News, REGENT Craft Opens Seaglider Manufacturing Facility in Rhode Island, October 4, 2026. Renewable Energy Magazine, REGENT Marks Opening of Seaglider Manufacturing Facility With Flight Demonstration, October 8, 2026. Tech Times, Regent Seaglider Factory Opens With Marine Corps Endorsement, October 2, 2026. Defence Blog and company announcements, REGENT $240 million Series B funding, August 2026.