Regent aims to fly its electric seagliders over the waterways of Japan
Billy Thalheimer (CEO) and Michael Klinker (CTO) of REGENT with a full-scale mockup of their first electric seaglider.
Courtesy REGENT
Regent, a startup developing electric seagliders to transport people and cargo, has raised a $60 million round of venture funding and struck a partnership with Japan Airlines to figure out how to bring the company’s flying electric ferries to the waterways of Japan.
Venture fund 8090 Industries co-led Regent’s series A round alongside Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, with Japan Airlines Innovation Fund and Point72 Ventures also participating among others. The new funding brings Regent’s total capital raised to $90 million to-date, according to co-founder and CEO Billy Thalheimer.
The funding follows two major milestones for the clean transportation startup. As CNBC previously reported, Regent built a quarter-scale prototype and completed a series of test runs on Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay late last year to prove that its seagliders, which are technically known as wing-in-ground-effect craft (WIGs) can “float, foil and fly” as expected.
The prototype was able to repeatedly motor out of a harbor slowly, then launch from a speed of about 40 mph into the air, where it flew around 10 feet above the open ocean at a speed of approximately 50 mph in different, travel-safe weather conditions.
The commercial version of this battery powered 12-seater, named the Viceroy, will fly higher above the water at speeds of up to 180 mph, Thalheimer says. The battery that powers the Viceroy seaglider will have a range of about 180 miles.
More recently, Regent built a full-scale mockup of the Viceroy, and a “sim room” at its headquarters where visitors can sit in a mock cockpit, and virtually fly the seaglider over any chosen waterway. Thalheimer said, “You can build as many decks or pitches as you want but this is the experience that unlocks excitement.”
Regent has built a full-scale mockup of its first electric seaglider, the 12-seat Viceroy.
Courtesy REGENT
Eventually, travelers should be able to go down to a dock and board Regent seagliders like they would a regular ferry or water taxi. Besides using these WIGs for travel in coastal communities, Regent plans to sell seagliders to organizations providing cargo transport, search and rescue, offshore logistics as well as security and defense services.
Airlines and ferry operators including Mesa Airlines, Brittany Ferries and FRS are among customers who have already signed deals to purchase Regent’s seagliders. The company says it has orders for more than 500 seagliders representing some $8 billion in future revenue. Southern Airways is poised to take the first production Viceroy, which it plans to operate under their Mokulele Airlines brand. Mokulele currently operates inter-island routes throughout Hawaii.
Regent will use its new round of funding for hiring as well as building and testing full-scale prototypes of the Viceroy, along with all the safety systems required to run the seagliders with people on board, Thalheimer says.
The company already has 55 full-time employees, the CEO said, and has managed to attract talent from the likes of SpaceX and Bureau Veritas, an international regulator of ships and vessels.
Longer term, Regent is developing a 100-seat seaglider dubbed the Monarch which is in early design stages. Including regulatory approvals, the company expects its Viceroy 12-seat seagliders to be in production and in service within two to three years. It expects the larger Monarch seagliders to be in service by 2030.
8090 Industries general partner Rayyan Islam, who co-led the series A investment in Regent, told CNBC that his firm backed the startup because of the demand for its seagliders, and the early team’s success in prototyping and proving the viability of the Viceroy.
Islam’s firm sees a new industrial revolution underway, one in which every sector will need to pursue “decarbonization” in a way that makes good business sense. Regent’s seagliders, the investor said, can eliminate much of the greenhouse gas emissions from short-haul flights in aviation, and other emissions from ferries and water taxis, which typically run on diesel while working alongside existing infrastructure.
Islam also envisions Regent seagliders carrying people and equipment to help build, monitor or maintain offshore energy developments, from aging oil rigs to massive wind turbines.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta’s AI assistant now has 1 billion monthly active users across the company’s family of apps, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.
The “focus for this year is deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI with an emphasis on personalization, voice conversations and entertainment,” Zuckerberg said.
The artificial intelligent assistant’s 1 billion milestone comes after the company in April released a standalone app for the tool.
The plan is for Meta to keep growing the product before building a business around it, Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. As Meta AI improves overtime, Zuckerberg said “there will be opportunities to either insert paid recommendations” or offer “a subscription service so that people can pay to use more compute.”
In February, CNBC reported that Meta was planning to debut a standalone Meta AI app during the second quarter and test a paid-subscription service akin to rival chat apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“It may seem kind of funny that a billion monthly actives doesn’t seem like it’s at scale for us, but that’s where we’re at,” Zuckerberg told shareholders.
During the Meta shareholder meeting, investors voted on 14 different items related to the company’s business, nine of which were shareholder proposals covering topics such as child safety, greenhouse gas emissions and a proposed bitcoin treasury assessment.
Shareholder proposal 8, for example, was submitted by JLens, which is an investment advisor and affiliate of the Anti-Defamation League, and called for Meta to prepare an annual report detailing and addressing hate content, including antisemitism, on its services following January policy changes that relaxed content-moderation guidelines.
Early voting results on Wednesday showed the proposals that Meta’s board did not recommend were unlikely to pass, including one calling for the company to end its dual-class share structure, which gives Zuckerberg significant voting power. Meanwhile, the voting items that the board favored, including those pertaining to approving the company’s board of director nominees and an equity incentive plan, were likely to pass, based on the preliminary results.
Meta said final polling results will be released within four business days on the company’s website and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff participates in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2025.
Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Salesforce shares were volatile in extended trading on Wednesday after the sales and customer service software maker reported upbeat fiscal first-quarter results and guidance.
Here’s how the company performed relative to LSEG consensus:
- Earnings per share: $2.58 adjusted vs. 2.54 expected
- Revenue: $9.83 billion vs. $9.75 billion expected
Salesforce’s revenue grew 7.6% year over year in the quarter, which ended on April 30, according to a statement. Net income of $1.54 billion, or $1.59 per share, was basically flat compared with $1.53 billion, or $1.56 per share, a year ago.
President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. in early April. Co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff sounded positive about the company’s results for the quarter anyway, pointing to its plan, announced on Tuesday, to buy data management company Informatica for $8 billion.
It would be Salesforce’s priciest acquisition since the $27.1 billion Slack deal in 2021. Slack marked the top end of the buyouts Salesforce had made under Benioff. Activist investors raised concerns about all the spending, in addition to slowing revenue growth.
Salesforce sprung into action, slashing 10% of its headcount. Benioff proclaimed that the board’s mergers and acquisitions committee had been disbanded. The company’s finance chief at the time said it would reach a margin expansion goal two years early. And Salesforce started paying dividends to shareholders.
Initial reception to the Informatica announcement was generally favorable. “Salesforce is paying a reasonable multiple for the asset, in our view, and the deal should be more easily digested by investors than some of the company’s large deals in the past (i.e. Slack),” Stifel analysts led by J. Parker Lane wrote in a note to clients. The investment bank has a buy rating on Salesforce shares.
During the fiscal first quarter, Salesforce introduced the AgentExchange marketplace for artificial intelligence agents.
Management sees $2.76 to $2.78 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.11 billion to $10.16 billion in revenue for the fiscal second quarter. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $2.73 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.01 billion in revenue.
Salesforce bumped up its full-year forecast. It called for $11.27 to $11.33 in adjusted earnings per share and $41.0 billion to $41.3 billion in revenue, implying revenue growth between 8% and 9%. The LSEG consensus included net income of $11.16 per share and $40.82 billion in revenue. The guidance in February was $11.09 to $11.17 in adjusted earnings per share, with $40.5 billion to $40.9 billion in revenue.
As of Wednesday’s close, the stock had slipped about 18% so far in 2025, while the S&P index was unchanged.
Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
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