Prentis, an AI research lab focused on computer-use models, is reportedly in talks to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The startup was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ritankar Das, alongside LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Zynga founder Mark Pincus, and launched in April.
Prentis is training AI agents to navigate routine office workflows across documents and systems, aiming to automate tasks like insurance claims processing and customs duty refund handling. The company has signed contracts worth up to $50 million with clients including a healthcare management organization and manufacturers, with investor materials projecting an estimated $75 million annualized run rate by the third quarter, though those figures are tied to performance-based fees rather than recognized revenue.
Prentis claims its Hive-32B model outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 on computer-use benchmarks while running at roughly one-tenth the cost of frontier APIs, positioning itself in a competitive field that includes Anthropic, OpenAI, and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab, all pursuing computer-use agents. Das, who also runs holding company Titan and previously founded ventures including Tala Health and Forta Health, leads Prentis alongside more than 25 employees hired from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Tencent, and Alibaba.
