Prentis, a new AI research lab focused on computer use models, is in talks to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The startup was launched in April and is co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ritankar Das, Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus.
Prentis is training models to learn how office workers navigate routine workflows, with the goal of building AI agents that can control computers to automate tasks such as handling insurance claims and automating customs duty refund exceptions.
The company has already signed contracts worth up to $50 million with several customers, including a healthcare management service organisation, a manufacturer, and goods and clothing manufacturers. Investor materials predict an estimated $75 million annualised run rate by the third quarter of this year, though the figures are described as performance-dependent and subject to final execution.
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. The company claims roughly 10 times lower cost per task than frontier APIs. TechCrunch has not independently verified these results.
The startup is betting that automating everyday office tasks will soon outpace coding as AI's biggest use case, but it faces competition from Anthropic, OpenAI and Thinking Machines Lab. Prentis has hired more than 25 employees, including researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Tencent and Alibaba.