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 sources familiar with the discussions. The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ritankar Das, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and Zynga founder Marc Pincus. Launched in April, Prentis trains models to learn how office workers navigate routine workflows across documents and systems, aiming to build 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 the pitch deck notes these figures reflect estimated annualized value based on a contracted fee equal to 20% of savings realized, not recognized revenue, and are performance-dependent. 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. 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 has not independently verified the benchmark results.

The startup is betting that automating everyday office tasks will soon outpace coding as AI’s biggest use case, but it faces a crowded market. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines are also working on computer-use AI agents. Anthropic acquired the Seattle startup Vercept earlier this year, folding in its founders and shutting down its product. Prentis did not respond to a 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 18 with a double major in bioengineering and chemical biology before earning a master’s at Oxford. He founded Titan in 2014 after dropping out of an AI PhD program at Cambridge. Titan has launched other businesses including Tala Health (a $100 million seed round), Forta Health ($55 million led by Insight Partners), and Dascena (acquired by CirrusDx in 2022). Prentis is a side project for Hoffman and Pincus; Hoffman recently stepped down from Microsoft’s board to go ‘founder mode’ on Manas AI, an AI drug-discovery startup, and was an early OpenAI investor and co-founder of Inflection AI. Pincus runs Reinvent Capital with Hoffman as a senior adviser, and published a memoir last month. Prentis has hired more than 25 employees, including researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Tencent, and Alibaba, according to its website.