Prentis, AI Lab Co-Founded by Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, in Talks to Raise $100M

Prentis, a new AI research lab focused on computer use models, is in advanced discussions to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The startup was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ritankar Das and tech heavyweights Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn) and Mark Pincus (co-founder of Zynga). Launched in April 2025, Prentis trains models to understand how office workers navigate routine workflows across various documents and systems. The company’s ultimate goal is to develop AI agents that can control computers to automate these tasks, potentially transforming workplace productivity. The startup has already secured contracts worth up to $50 million with several customers, including a healthcare management service organization, a manufacturer, and goods and clothing manufacturers. These figures align with investor materials obtained by TechCrunch, which project an estimated $75 million annualized run rate by the third quarter of 2026. However, Prentis’ pitch deck notes that these figures reflect estimated annualized value based on a contracted fee equal to 20% of savings realized—not recognized revenue—and are “performance-dependent and subject to final execution.” Prentis will ostensibly develop agents tailored to its customers’ specific needs, such as handling insurance claims and automating customs duty refund exceptions without requiring human intervention to track down paperwork. According to the company, its Hive-32B model outperforms rivals—including OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6—on two computer-use benchmarks: WindowsAgentArena, which measures end-to-end task completion on real Windows applications, and ScreenSpot-v2, which tests a model’s ability to locate the correct on-screen control. In its pitch deck, Prentis argues that its edge stems from running a much smaller, cheaper model, claiming roughly 10 times lower cost per task compared to frontier APIs, making it more economical for deployment across everyday workflows. TechCrunch has not independently verified these benchmark results. The startup is betting that automating routine office tasks will soon outpace coding as AI’s largest use case, but the market is crowded. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab are also working on developing AI agents for computer use, according to one source. Anthropic has been actively acquiring talent in this category; earlier this year, it bought Seattle-based computer-use startup Vercept, folding in its founders and shutting down its product. Prentis did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. Ritankar Das, CEO of Prentis, is also the founder of Titan, a holding company that builds and operates AI companies. Das, now 31, was UC Berkeley’s youngest University Medalist in more than a century, graduating at age 18 with a double major in bioengineering and chemical biology before earning a master’s in biomedical engineering at Oxford. He founded Titan in 2014 after dropping out of an AI PhD program at Cambridge, where he had been a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Das has described Titan as an intentional throwback to an old-fashioned holding-company model like Berkshire Hathaway, one that is funded by its own exits rather than outside limited partners.

via TechCrunch AI