It’s a boat, it’s a plane, it’s REGENT’s Seafarer | E2205

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Nov 8, 2025

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Billy Thalheimer, founder of REGENT, reveals their innovative Seaglider, a hybrid air-and-sea vehicle poised to revolutionize travel while minimizing airport hassles. Ayaan Parekh of Convexia shares insights on leveraging AI to discover and repurpose shelved drug candidates for rare diseases. Finally, Hunter Leath from Arkyl discusses their caching-as-a-service solution that transforms cloud data access into a local experience, speeding up applications while reducing costs. The future of transport and healthcare technology is fresh and promising!

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INSIGHT

Selection, Not Discovery, Becomes The Bottleneck

Vast preclinical and shelved assets exist because only a tiny fraction of candidates reach market.
Increasing AI-driven molecule generation will make selection and triage the critical bottleneck.

ADVICE

Predict Shelved Assets From Public Signals

Mine company reports, manufacturing signals, and patents to predict shelved assets before direct relationships exist.
Use structured and unstructured data models to identify likely in-licensing targets.

INSIGHT

ML Models Are Accelerating Computational Biology

ML-based bio models are rapidly improving and will increasingly supplement or surpass physics-based approaches.
Different tasks (binding vs toxicity) will progress at different rates, shaping hybrid workflows.

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Today’s show:

*The key to avoiding long airport delays? Low-altitude sea planes! Why didn’t you think of that?

We’ve got an awesome line-up of TWiST 500 founders giving us an inside glimpse inside their startups on this Friday special edition.

FIRST: Billy Thalheimer of REGENT introduces us to their aircraft/boat hybrid The Seaglider, and walk us through how it all works, AND why they’re operating in BOTH the commercial and defense sectors from their Rhode Island HQ.

THEN, we’ve got Convexia co-founder Ayaan Parekh showcasing how they’re using a collective of specialist AI agents to exploit other pharma labs’ leftovers and turn them into new drugs and treatments for rare diseases.

FINALLY, Hunter Leath of Archil joins the show to tell us why efficient utilization of cloud data remains a surprisingly complex, and unsolved problem. His solution? Caching-as-a-Service! Find out how it all works, and why pre-caching is SO difficult to do, in this TWiST exclusive chat.

Timestamps:

(03:01) Billy Thalheimer of REGENT introduces us to the Seaglider
(05:06) Inside the EV aircraft/boat hybrid’s three modes of operation
(08:22) How REGENT uses low altitude flight to avoid airport-related hassles

(9:42) Sentry - New users get 3 months free of the Business plan (covers 150k errors). Go to ⁠http://sentry.io/twist⁠ and use code TWIST

(13:57) The converging tech that makes Seaglider possible
(18:20) How REGENT is operating in BOTH the commercial and defense sectors
(19:39) LinkedIn Ads - Start converting your B2B audience into high quality leads today. Launch your first campaign and get $250 FREE when you spend at least $250. Go to ⁠http://linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups⁠ to claim your credit.
(25:05) Why Rhode Island?!
(29:23) Pipedrive - Bring your entire sales process into one elegant space. Get started with a 30 day free trial at ⁠https://pipedrive.com/twist⁠
(31:04) Convexia co-founder Ayan Parekh joins Alex to discuss “the world’s first AI-maximalist pharmaceutical company”
(33:02) Using AI agents to revisit leftover bio IP and unused data
(33:22) Why so many drugs fail to reach market
(35:46) Applying different agents to different kinds of tasks
(44:26) The unique opportunities posed by rare diseases
(46:58) On the road toward vertical integration
(50:48) Hunter Leath of Archil tells us why utilizing cloud data effectively remains a complex, unsolved problem
(51:56) What is “Caching as a Service”?
(55:53) Why pre-caching is NOT obvious and “tremendously difficult to do”
(57:00) Why the major cloud players didn’t built this themselves
(01:00:37) Deliberately keeping the focus narrow… for now…

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