Prentis, a new artificial intelligence research lab focused on computer-use models, is in discussions to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation. The startup, co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ritankar Das alongside tech luminaries Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, aims to develop AI agents that can control computers to automate routine office workflows. According to sources familiar with the talks, the funding round would value the company at $1 billion, reflecting the growing investor appetite for AI startups targeting enterprise productivity.
Origins and Mission
Launched in April, Prentis is training models to learn how office workers navigate standard tasks across documents, spreadsheets, and enterprise software. The goal is to build AI agents that can take control of a computer to complete these workflows autonomously—handling everything from data entry to complex multi-step processes. The startup's name, Prentis, evokes the concept of an apprentice, learning by observing and then taking over repetitive tasks.
The company has already signed contracts worth up to $50 million with several customers, including a healthcare management service organization, a manufacturer, and two goods and clothing manufacturers. These contracts are performance-based, with Prentis charging a fee equal to 20% of the cost savings realized by the client. Investor materials obtained by TechCrunch project an estimated $75 million annualized run rate by the third quarter of this year, though these figures are described as estimated annualized value based on contracted fees and are subject to final execution.
Technology and Competitive Edge
Prentis claims its proprietary model, Hive-32B, outperforms leading alternatives from OpenAI and Anthropic on two key 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. According to the company's pitch deck, Hive-32B is a much smaller and cheaper model, delivering roughly 10 times lower cost per task compared to frontier APIs. This cost efficiency is seen as a critical advantage for widespread deployment across everyday office workflows. TechCrunch has not independently verified the benchmark results.
Market Context and Competition
The startup is betting that automating office tasks will soon surpass coding as AI's biggest use case. However, it is entering a crowded market. Major players like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab are all developing AI agents for computer use. Anthropic has been particularly aggressive, acquiring the Seattle-based computer-use startup Vercept earlier this year and folding in its founders. The race to build the most effective office automation agents is heating up, with each company vying to capture a share of the enterprise market.
Founders' Backgrounds
Ritankar Das, the CEO of Prentis, is 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 18 with a double major in bioengineering and chemical biology. He later earned a master's in biomedical engineering at Oxford and dropped 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, funded by its own exits rather than outside limited partners.
Other businesses launched and operated by Titan include Tala Health, an AI-powered virtual care provider that 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.
Prentis is a side project of sorts for its other two co-founders. Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner, recently announced 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. Hoffman was an early investor in OpenAI and co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleyman before Microsoft absorbed most of that team in 2024. Mark Pincus, the founder of Zynga, now runs the investment firm Reinvent Capital with Hoffman as a senior adviser. Pincus also published a memoir, "Life at the Speed of Play," last month.
Workforce and Talent
Prentis has already hired more than 25 employees, including researchers who previously worked at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Tencent, and Alibaba. The talent acquisition reflects the startup's ambition and the caliber of its leadership. The team is focused on building models that can understand and execute complex computer tasks, a challenge that many in the AI field consider the next frontier.
Industry Implications
The rise of computer-use AI agents has significant implications for enterprise productivity and the future of work. By automating routine tasks, companies can reduce labor costs, minimize errors, and free up human workers for higher-value activities. However, concerns about job displacement and the reliability of AI agents remain. Prentis's approach of observing and learning from human workflows is intended to build trust and accuracy, but the technology is still in its early stages.
The $100 million fundraising effort, if successful, would give Prentis significant capital to scale its operations, expand its customer base, and invest in research and development. The $1 billion valuation reflects the high expectations investors have for the startup's technology and market potential. As the competition in AI agents intensifies, Prentis's unique combination of experienced founders, strong customer traction, and cost-efficient model could give it a distinct advantage.
Prentis did not respond to requests for comment.
Source:TechCrunch News