On the Wing with REGENT

Company founders Mike Klinker and Billy Thalheimer in front of a model of the Viceroy Seaglider at the company’s headquarters in Quonset Business Park. Portrait by James Jones

The skies are overcast in Quonset, and the world’s first electric Seaglider is preparing for its morning run on Narragansett Bay.

Tethered to a dock at the Port of Davisville in North Kingstown, the Seaglider — part boat, part plane, and powered by electric motors — bobs patiently in the water as workers load testing gear inside its carbon-fiber hull. With a sixty-five-foot wingspan, it towers over the smaller boats surrounding it like an oversized bird of prey anxious to take flight. Inside the cockpit, two men suited up in helmets and lifejackets glance over the controls. One of them looks up and waves through the windshield, flashing an eager smile.

At an unheard signal, a yellow-and-black-striped support boat — named Seabee for the naval battalion that originated in Quonset — tows the Seaglider away from the dock. Two fishermen look on as the sleek white craft glides into the bay. With twelve propellers dotted evenly across its wings, it looks better suited for a launchpad than surrounded by seagulls in the early morning chop. As the craft angles into position in front of the Jamestown Bridge, the blue lettering on its side becomes visible against the gray morning sky: REGENT.

The motors start, sending a dull drone across the water. As the craft gathers speed, two support boats flank out behind like geese. The deep V hull cuts through the surf, waves breaking on either side, until suddenly, the Seaglider rises a few feet above the water. Two narrow foils extend beneath the surface, supporting the 15,000-pound craft as it glides across the bay, barely leaving a wake.

A short distance away on a boat, a woman watches it closely. A smile grows beneath her tinted sunglasses as she follows its journey, chin resting on her hand. The Seaglider passes the boat before slowing and sinking back beneath the waves. As it veers around for another run, she pulls herself away from the sight, beaming.

“That was amazing. I’ve been waiting so long to see that. It’s almost surreal,” she says.

The woman is Lindsey Thalheimer, a biomedical engineer and Rhode Island transplant who moved to the state in 2022. Her husband, Billy Thalheimer, is behind the controls of the Seaglider with his business partner, Mike Klinker. Five years ago, Billy and Klinker founded REGENT with the goal of producing — and, eventually, mass-producing — an all-electric Seaglider. The company, whose name stands for Regional Electric Ground Effect Nautical Transport, has impressed investors and government officials alike with its rapid growth and vision for a new system of transportation. If they succeed — and investors have bet more than $100 million that they will — they’ll not only revolutionize global ocean travel but put Rhode Island at the center of a new industry poised to remake our interactions along the coast.

It’s a good day to be in Quonset.

The story begins, as so many tech startups do, on a college campus.

Thalheimer and Klinker were both aerospace engineering students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they sat next to each other in introduction to aerospace engineering class freshman year. Thalheimer, an aspiring astronaut from Natick, Massachusetts, was on the sailing team. Klinker, who grew up in New Hampshire and dreamed of building airplanes, did crew. They completed their senior year capstone project together.

After completing their bachelor’s degrees in 2014 and master’s degrees in 2016, they went their separate ways in the fast-paced aerospace world. Thalheimer, who still harbored astronaut dreams, applied to fly F-35 fighter jets with the Vermont Air National Guard. He was accepted but contracted Lyme disease while hiking in the Green Mountains and ended up working instead for Aurora Flight Sciences. The company (now owned by Boeing) develops cutting-edge technologies for aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles. There, he worked on eVTOLs, or electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, then on track to become the next big thing in commercial aviation.

Klinker, meanwhile, was designing autonomous drones, first with a startup building agricultural drones and then at MIT’s federally funded Lincoln Laboratory. Eventually, he, too, found himself working at Aurora Flight Sciences, where Thalheimer had begun to think beyond eVTOLs. The craft was at the forefront of innovation, but its range was limited by battery storage. Like traditional aircraft, eVTOLs are regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration, subjecting them to a lengthy certification process and strict pilot standards.

In 2020, Thalheimer approached Klinker and other MIT contacts with an idea. What if they designed an electric vehicle that flew through the air but operated over water so it was regulated like a boat? The vehicle would use a phenomenon called wing-in-ground effect to take advantage of air pockets over the surface and fly more efficiently than a traditional aircraft. The technology had been developed before — notably by the Soviet Union during the Cold War — but was never viable for commercial production.

“I knew it could work,” Thalheimer says. “The math worked. The physics worked. I knew I could sell it, too, because I had done all the market analysis at that point.”

Klinker signed on, and they made their first pitch in late 2020 to the individuals who could make or break the project: their romantic partners. Klinker had been married to his wife, Brittany, for all of two weeks, and Thalheimer was dating Lindsey, whom he’d met when she moved to Boston to work in biomed in 2018. Lindsey and Brittany gave their consent, on one condition.

“Our girlfriends/wives gave us five months from quitting to being gainfully employed again,” Thalheimer says. “Which meant we really only had three months to raise money or we’d have to start interviewing for jobs again.”

The two left Aurora and set up shop in Klinker’s apartment in Winchester, Massachusetts. Early on, they were accepted into Y Combinator, a three-month startup accelerator program that awards seed funding. Combined with additional funds from friends and family, the pair had about $500,000 to turn their Seaglider concept into reality. Thalheimer, chief executive officer, began calling up friends with MBAs for help developing a business strategy. Klinker, chief technology officer, got to work on the logistics.

At the same time they were developing a new mode of transportation, the COVID-19 pandemic was grounding global travel to a halt and disrupting the airline and ferry industries. Far from killing the project, the pause delivered an unexpected boost as travel executives suddenly found themselves with more time at home to hear out a couple of tech entrepreneurs from Boston.

The Seaglider is
prepared for testing. All Seaglider Photography: © Amory Ross/REGENT.

“It flattened the world a little bit and it made our access to top executives in our space easier,” Thalheimer recalls.

By Christmas — when Lindsey and Brittany gifted the guys shirts that read “Salaries are overrated” — the company was sparking interest. Its earliest supporters were transportation companies who envisioned the Seaglider as a new, cheaper solution for carrying passengers over short-haul routes. Brittany Ferries, which operates between the United Kingdom, France and Spain, signed a letter of intent to purchase Seagliders in June 2021. Hawaiian Airlines, another early investor, made plans to use the Seaglider on its regional routes between the Hawaiian islands. They also found an early supporter in investor Mark Cuban.

“We needed to be a different thing to everyone,” Thalheimer says. “To the ferry industry, we’re a flying ferry. To the airlines, we are a flying machine that operates on their same routes out of docks under maritime law.”

By spring 2021, the company had enough investment to hire its first employees and begin building a prototype. The idea had generated plenty of buzz, but Thalheimer and Klinker still hadn’t proven that the concept — an electric Seaglider that used foils to assist with takeoff and landing — could fly. The design drew heavily from competitive sailing, an industry that has long had a foothold in Rhode Island. One of the company’s first employees, chief engineer and lead designer Bryan Baker, formerly designed racing yachts for the America’s Cup and Ocean Race and met Thalheimer while sharing an office with him at Aurora. Like those boats, the Seaglider incorporates two hydrofoils that allow it to rise above the water, achieving a more efficient takeoff than a traditional aircraft. After takeoff, the foils retract into the craft during flight mode. The building materials, likewise, are the same carbon-fiber composites used on the fastest racing boats.

“Having Bryan, who understood all the flight physics of an aircraft but came from a maritime world, opened up a whole required complement,” Thalheimer says. “We could go into the very pinnacle of yachting racing sport and get the best boatbuilders in the world to come join us.”

For that expertise, they went to a town whose legacy in the craft was well known. Their quarter-scale prototype, named Squire, was fabricated at Moore Brothers Company in Bristol and christened on Narragansett Bay in December 2021. That spring, employees spent several months testing it in its floating and foiling modes in Florida before returning home to New England.

With the company continuing to grow, REGENT relocated its headquarters to the Quonset Business Park in August 2022. In addition to meeting the company’s geographical requirements — an inland bay for testing and access to world-class boatbuilding facilities and expertise — the state offered a generous incentive package of up to $13 million in tax credits over ten years. In exchange, the company committed to creating 300 jobs by 2028.

On Aug. 15, 2022, the prototype flew for the first time on Narragansett Bay. Klinker and Thalheimer followed behind in a support boat, with Thalheimer recording the milestone using a drone.

“I was glued to the screen, but I was screaming my head off,” Thalheimer says. “To me, that moment — that was the first time that anyone had taken off from hydrofoils onto a wing. No one had done that before, and we proved it.”

The real work had just begun.

Regent’s headquarters in a converted hangar on Callahan Road has all the trappings of a Silicon Valley startup. Staff gathers daily for a catered lunch, with pizza on Fridays. Employees wear khakis or jeans and T-shirts, and dogs join their owners for strolls around the office. Interns — selected from 3,500 applicants — work studiously at desks shadowed by a full-scale model of Viceroy, the company’s twelve-passenger Seaglider that’s currently in sea trials on Narragansett Bay. 1960s-era airline advertisements line the walls, with a newer version featuring a Seaglider atop a glistening Narragansett Bay. “Travel to Rhode Island by seaglider,” it reads.

A crane lowers the craft into the water at the Port of Davisville. All Seaglider Photography: © Amory Ross/REGENT.

In the conference room, framed wall hangings show the company’s target markets. In addition to Hawaii and New England, REGENT is marketing the Seaglider as an alternative travel mode in coastal Florida and the Bahamas, the Mediterranean, New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines and the Arabian Gulf.

Aside from having no emissions and a longer range than eVTOLs, Thalheimer and Klinker say their Seaglider is easier and less expensive to maintain than a helicopter or small aircraft. Because it flies above the water, it’s less impacted by sea conditions than a ferry, and its twelve electric motors can be easily switched out for replacement or repair. With about seven Teslas’ worth of battery storage, a forty-five-minute charge fuels the Viceroy model up for a maximum trip length of 180 miles.

“It is faster, it is cheaper, it is greener, it is more reliable, and it’s more comfortable,” Thalheimer says.

Ed Wegel, the founder and chairman of UrbanLink, is among those counting on the Seaglider to revolutionize transportation. His two-year-old company plans to start all-electric routes across south Florida, beginning with a seventy-
mile route from Miami to Palm Beach. In addition to a fleet of eVTOLs manufactured in Vermont, he’s expecting his first delivery of Seagliders in 2027.

“The world is moving toward, and particularly the airline industry and the aviation industry is moving toward, zero emissions,” he says. “We saw this as being on the forefront of that.”

A thirty-five-minute Seaglider ride, he says, would cut driving time between the two cities by approximately two hours and cost around $50 one-way. The company also plans to expand service to the Bahamas, and offer connections to nearby airports.

Rhode Island may see its own Seaglider routes. David Neeleman, the businessman behind several low-cost airlines — including, most recently, Breeze Airways, which operates a base at Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport — says he’s in discussions with REGENT about Breeze operating Seaglider routes out of the state. He describes the venture, which could include routes to New York City and Long Island as well as locations off the coast, as a low-cost alternative to short-haul flights. Neeleman also serves on REGENT’s advisory board.

“This is really a game changer,” he says. “It would be less expensive for sure than flying on a major airline. And we’ll be able to fly you right to downtown Manhattan.”

Thalheimer and Klinker during testing on Wednesday, Aug. 6. Selfie Photograph: © Billy Thalheimer/REGENT.

The technology has limits, however. Despite assurances from REGENT, a frequent concern raised in transportation circles and online commentary is the craft’s ability to navigate rough sea conditions. The Seaglider cannot operate when ice accumulates on the wings, which limits its use seasonally in many locations. Thalheimer says the company is working on a deicing capability to expand its range.

One entity that has invested significant funds in bringing the technology up to speed is the United States government. In 2023, the company announced it had secured a $4.75 million contract with the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab to demonstrate the Seaglider’s application for defense uses and develop a prototype. That contract was extended this past March with $10 million in additional funds. According to Tom Huntley, REGENT’s vice president of government relations and general manager of REGENT Defense, those uses could include moving people and cargo in contested areas; search and rescue, medevac and casevac missions; and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

“At any one time, a Seaglider in the defense arsenal can conduct all of these missions and conduct them at high speed with extended range and low signature,” he says. “Its operational profile is below radar but above sonar, so it really is nearly invisible to standard detection.”

In 2024, the company opened a second office in Washington, D.C., to support its defense and certification efforts. As a maritime vessel, the Seaglider will be regulated and certified by the U.S. Coast Guard with technical input from the Federal Aviation Administration. Seaglider operators are expected to train in Rhode Island and will be credentialed mariners but will not require a pilot’s license.

U.S. Senator Jack Reed, who serves as ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, says the potential for military application is huge, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. In addition to its electric, crewed model, the company is developing autonomous models for military use as well as a hybrid version capable of traveling 1,400 nautical miles, or the distance from Okinawa to Guam.

“I think what you’re going to see with the focus on the Pacific is the need for those types of aircraft that can land on the water and go from island to island,” Reed says.

He points out it’s the most recent in a long history of military technology to come out of Quonset.

“That’s the result, I think, of a lot of investment by the federal government over the years,” he says. “I’ve been involved in about $600 million of investment to make Quonset Point really a destination. And fortunately, the folks from REGENT found that destination.”

the Viceroy foils during testing on Narragansett Bay. All Seaglider Photography: © Amory Ross/REGENT.

On Jan. 27 of this year, governor Dan MCkee, REGENT leadership, the state’s federal delegation and other public and private officials gathered to break ground on the company’s new, 255,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. The facility, slated to open in Quonset next year, is expected to create between 200 and 300 jobs and represents another $4 million in state incentives.

“There’s a great deal of innovation [in Quonset],” McKee says. “The synergy of that innovation has been important to REGENT. Where they’re attracting engineers and good paying jobs into a place where there’s a number of other businesses doing the same thing.”

REGENT is part of a growing wave of ocean-dependent business ventures referred to by economists and public officials as the blue economy. According to Grow Blue, a coalition of local businesses and agencies geared toward marine economic development, Rhode Island’s blue economy was estimated at $5.2 billion and 36,500 jobs in 2023 and is projected to grow by 54,000 jobs in the next decade. This includes fisheries and recreation as well as growing industries like aquaculture, marine trades and defense.

For Anthony Marchese, dean of the University of Rhode Island’s College of Engineering, the state’s growing role as a hub for ocean technology presents an exciting prospect for researchers and graduates. Companies like Ørsted, Anduril, Vatn Systems and Flux Marine are growing their presence in Quonset and Bristol even as the state invests $145 million to transform the URI Bay Campus into a center for innovation. Meanwhile, the longtime presence of General Dynamics Electric Boat and Newport’s Naval Undersea Warfare Center anchor the state’s defense technology sector.

“We would like to see the state of Rhode Island become the Silicon Valley for ocean technology,” Marchese says. “My hope is ten years from now when you think of the ocean economy, this is sort of the hub of that activity.”

For REGENT, building a Seaglider industry from the ground up requires patience. Like Electric Boat, the company has partnered with SkillsRI and the New England Institute of Technology to provide future training opportunities for its manufacturing workforce. Amy Grzybowski, NEIT’s vice president of workforce development and community relations, says the school is well-equipped to create pathways in welding, machining, engineering and any other skills REGENT employees need.

“As we figure out what those short-term skill sets are, we are ready and willing to create those programs,” she says.

Thalheimer also names the state’s housing and health care shortages as challenges in recruiting workers to Rhode Island. Early on, he says, it was difficult to convince employees to relocate, but that sentiment is changing as word gets out about the state’s ocean technology “renaissance.”

The Viceroy Seaglider is still in testing and expected to fly this fall. All Seaglider Photography: © Amory Ross/REGENT.

“We go to conferences now and people say, ‘There’s something going on in Rhode Island right now, isn’t there?’ Rhode Island is on the mind of investors and other companies in the space,” he says.

It’s not lost on REGENT’s founders that their design is only the latest innovative craft launched on Narragansett Bay. Prior to its relocation to Quonset, the company stored its prototype between sea trials in space leased from Bristol’s Herreshoff Marine Museum, on the site of the former Herreshoff Manufacturing Company. Next to their carbon-fiber Seaglider was a half-restored wooden sailboat that was, in its time, the greatest marine technology of the day.

“There’s a lot of history of innovation here,” Thalheimer says. “It’s cool to be a part of that history.”

With the day’s testing complete in Quonset, a crane lifts the Seaglider from the water and stores it in an oceanside hangar for future tests. On the docks, Thalheimer and Klinker remove their helmets while reporters batter them with questions about the timeline ahead. The company has set an aggressive schedule for future milestones, beginning with the full-scale Seaglider’s first flight on Narragansett Bay this fall. The first delivery of commercial craft has been promised for 2027, and by 2031, the company expects to manufacture more than 100 Seagliders each year between Quonset and a second facility planned for Abu Dhabi that will serve the international market. In the meantime, plans have already been announced for the company’s second full-scale model, the 100-passenger Monarch Seaglider, available by the end of this decade.

For the founders’ families, the journey has been all-consuming, an exhilarating and exhausting ride toward an electric future. Lindsey recalls early days at the apartment in Winchester, when she and Brittany would play mock investors and tear their partners’ pitches to shreds, only to have the pair lock themselves in a room to rewrite the script. She envisions a day not too far in the future when she and Billy can get away to Nantucket, a favorite spot, and enjoy a brief rest from the job that has shaped their lives for the past five years.

The trip, she hopes, will be by Seaglider.

Tom Huntley, vice president of government relations and general manager of REGENT Defense, with the Squire quarter-scale prototype. Portraits by James Jones