Prentis, a new AI research lab focused on computer-use models, is in talks to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation. Two sources familiar with the discussions confirmed the figures.
Ritankar Das co-founded the company alongside tech heavyweights Reid Hoffman and Marc Pincus. The lab launched in April with a specific aim: train models to learn how office workers navigate routine workflows across documents and systems. The goal is to build AI agents that can control computers to automate those tasks.
The startup intends to develop agents tailored to these customers’ needs. Examples include handling insurance claims and automating customs duty refund exceptions without requiring a human to hunt down paperwork.
Prentis has already signed contracts worth up to $50 million with several customers. These include a healthcare management service organisation, a manufacturer, and goods and clothing manufacturers. The two sources told TechCrunch that investor materials obtained by the publication predict an estimated $75 million annualised run rate by the third quarter of this year. Prentis’s pitch deck notes those figures reflect estimated annualised value based on a contracted fee equal to 20% of savings realised. The company states these are not recognised revenue and are performance-dependent and subject to final execution.
By its own account, Prentis says its Hive-32B model outperforms rivals. These include OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 on two computer-use benchmarks. WindowsAgentArena measures end-to-end task completion on real Windows applications. ScreenSpot-v2 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. It claims roughly 10 times lower cost per task than frontier APIs. The firm says it is more economical to deploy across everyday workflows. TechCrunch has not independently verified the company’s benchmark results.
The startup bets that automating everyday office tasks will soon outpace coding as AI’s biggest use case. That is a crowded market. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines are also working on developing AI agents for computer use, one source said. Anthropic has also been acquiring talent in the category directly. It bought the Seattle computer-use startup Vercept earlier this year, folding in its founders and shutting down its product.
Prentis did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
The founders
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. He graduated 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. Das has described Titan as an intentional throwback to an old-fashioned holding-company model like Berkshire Hathaway. He says it is funded by its own exits rather than outside limited partners.
Other businesses launched and operated by Titan include AI-powered virtual care provider Tala Health. That company raised a $100 million seed round last year. Forta Health, an autism care startup, raised $55 million led by Insight Partners in 2024. Titan-founded disease prediction company Dascena was acquired by CirrusDx in 2022.
Prentis is a side project of sorts for its two other co-founders. Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner, said last month that he was stepping down from Microsoft’s board after nearly a decade. He plans to go “founder mode” on Manas AI, an AI drug-discovery startup he’s also backing. He was an early OpenAI investor and co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleyman before Microsoft absorbed most of that team in 2024.
Pincus, the Zynga founder, now runs the investment firm Reinvent Capital with Hoffman as a senior adviser. He published a memoir, “Life at the Speed of Play,” last month.
Prentis has already hired more than 25 employees. Its website states these include researchers who previously worked at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Tencent and Alibaba.
What it means
This move signals a shift in focus from generic chatbots to specific agents that can interact directly with desktop software. If the model performs as claimed, it offers a cheaper alternative to existing tools for automating administrative work. However, the market is crowded and the company has yet to provide independent proof of its performance claims.
