Prentis, a new AI research lab focused on computer use models, is in discussions to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, according to two people familiar with the talks. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ritankar Das, along with tech heavyweights Reid Hoffman and Marc Pincus.
Launched in April, Prentis trains models to learn how office workers navigate routine workflows across documents and systems. The goal is to build AI agents that can control computers to automate those tasks.
Contracts and Revenue Projections
The startup has already signed contracts worth up to $50 million with several customers. These include a healthcare management service organization, a manufacturer, and goods and clothing manufacturers, according to the two people familiar with the discussions. They echoed investor materials obtained by TechCrunch that predict an estimated $75 million annualized run rate by the third quarter of this year.
Prentis's pitch deck notes that those figures reflect estimated annualized value based on a contracted fee equal to 20% of savings realized. They are not recognized revenue and are performance-dependent and subject to final execution.
Model Performance and Competitive Edge
By its own account, Prentis says its Hive-32B model outperforms rivals, including OpenAI's GPT-5.4 and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6, on two computer-use benchmarks. These are WindowsAgentArena, which measures end-to-end task completion on real Windows applications, and ScreenSpot-v2, which tests a model's ability to locate the right on-screen control.
In its pitch deck, the company argues its edge comes from running a much smaller, cheaper model. It claims roughly 10 times lower cost per task than frontier APIs, saying it is more economical to deploy across everyday workflows. TechCrunch has not independently verified the company's benchmark results.
Market Context and Competition
The startup is betting that automating everyday office tasks will soon outpace coding as AI's biggest use case. But it is a crowded market. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Mira Murati's Thinking Machines are also working on developing AI agents for computer use, one of the sources said. Anthropic has also been acquiring talent in the category directly. It bought the Seattle computer-use startup Vercept earlier this year, folding in its founders and shutting down its product.
Prentis did not respond to TechCrunch's request for comment.
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Leadership and Background
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. He graduated at 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.
Other businesses launched and operated by Titan include AI-powered virtual care provider Tala Health, which raised a $100 million seed round last year, and Forta Health, an autism care startup that raised $55 million led by Insight Partners in 2024. Titan-founded disease prediction company Dascena was acquired by CirrusDx in 2022.
Co-Founders' Other Ventures
Prentis is a side project of sorts for its two other co-founders. Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner, said last month that he was stepping down from Microsoft's board after nearly a decade to go founder mode on Manas AI, an AI drug-discovery startup he is also backing. He was an early OpenAI investor and co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleyman before Microsoft absorbed most of that team in 2024.
Pincus, the Zynga founder, now runs the investment firm Reinvent Capital with Hoffman as a senior adviser. He published a memoir, Life at the Speed of Play, last month.
Team and Hiring
Prentis has already hired more than 25 employees, including researchers who previously worked at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Tencent, and Alibaba, according to its website.