Prentis, a new AI research lab co-founded by Ritankar Das, Reid Hoffman, and Mark Pincus, is in talks to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Launched in April, Prentis focuses on computer-use models that learn how office workers navigate routine workflows across documents and systems, with the goal of building AI agents that can control computers to automate those tasks. The startup has already signed contracts worth up to $50 million with several customers, including a healthcare management service organization, a manufacturer, and goods and clothing manufacturers. Investor materials obtained by TechCrunch predict an estimated $75 million annualized run rate by the third quarter of this year, though Prentis‘s pitch deck notes those 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.

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: 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, claiming roughly 10 times lower cost per task than frontier APIs. TechCrunch hasn’t independently verified the company’s benchmark results.

The startup is betting that automating everyday office tasks will soon outpace coding as AI’s biggest use case, but it’s a crowded market. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab are also working on developing AI agents for computer use. Anthropic has also been acquiring talent in the category directly, buying the Seattle computer-use startup Vercept earlier this year. 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.

CEO Ritankar 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 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’d been a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Titan has launched other AI companies including Tala Health (which raised a $100 million seed round last year) and Forta Health (which raised $55 million led by Insight Partners in 2024). Prentis didn’t respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.