BitcoinWorld Prentis, AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman and Marc Pincus, seeks $100M at $1B valuation to automate office work Prentis, a new AI research lab focused on computer-use models, is
BitcoinWorld
Prentis, AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman and Marc Pincus, seeks $100M at $1B valuation to automate office work
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, co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ritankar Das alongside LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Zynga founder Marc Pincus, launched in April with the goal of training AI agents to navigate routine office workflows across documents and systems.
Prentis is developing AI models designed to learn how office workers handle everyday tasks—processing insurance claims, automating customs duty refund exceptions, and managing paperwork across multiple applications—without requiring human intervention. The company claims 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 correct 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. Bitcoin World has not independently verified these benchmark results.
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, according to people familiar with the discussions. Investor materials obtained by Bitcoin World predict an estimated $75 million annualized run rate by the third quarter of this year. 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.”
Prentis is betting that automating everyday office tasks will soon outpace coding as AI’s biggest use case, but it enters a crowded market. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines are also developing AI agents for computer use. Anthropic recently acquired the Seattle computer-use startup Vercept, folding in its founders and shutting down its product. The race to build practical, cost-effective AI agents for enterprise workflows is intensifying, and Prentis’s strong early customer commitments suggest demand is real.
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 had been a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Titan operates as a holding company modeled after Berkshire Hathaway, funded by its own exits. Other Titan-launched businesses include Tala Health, which raised a $100 million seed round last year, and Forta Health, an autism care startup that raised $55 million in 2024.
Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner, recently stepped down from Microsoft’s board to focus on Manas AI, an AI drug-discovery startup. He was an early OpenAI investor and co-founded Inflection AI before Microsoft absorbed most of that team in 2024. Pincus, who now runs Reinvent Capital with Hoffman as a senior adviser, published a memoir last month.
Prentis has already hired more than 25 employees, including researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Tencent, and Alibaba. The startup’s ability to secure significant customer contracts and high-profile backing suggests it is well-positioned in the competitive AI agent space, though the company’s long-term success will depend on execution and the evolving market for enterprise automation.
Q1: What does Prentis do?Prentis builds AI models that learn how office workers navigate routine workflows across documents and systems, with the goal of creating AI agents that can automate those tasks by controlling computers.
Q2: Who are the founders of Prentis?Prentis was co-founded by Ritankar Das (CEO), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder), and Marc Pincus (Zynga founder). Das also founded Titan, a holding company that builds and operates AI companies.
Q3: How much funding is Prentis raising?Prentis is in talks to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the discussions.
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