Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Marc Pincus in talks to raise $100M

Prentis, a caller AI probe laboratory focused connected machine usage models, co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ritankar Das, and tech heavyweights Reid Hoffman and Marc Pincus, is successful talks to rise $100 cardinal astatine a $1 cardinal valuation, according to 2 radical acquainted with the discussions.

Launched successful April, Prentis is grooming models to larn however bureau workers navigate regular workflows crossed documents and systems, with the extremity of gathering AI agents that tin power computers to automate those tasks.

Prentis volition ostensibly make agents tailored to these customers’ needs, specified arsenic handling security claims and automating customs work refund exceptions without needing a quality to hunt down paperwork.

The startup has already signed contracts worthy up to $50 cardinal with respective customers, including healthcare absorption work organization, a manufacturer, and goods and covering manufactures, the 2 radical acquainted with the discussions archer TechCrunch, echoing capitalist materials obtained by TechCrunch that foretell an estimated $75 cardinal annualized tally complaint by the 3rd 4th of this year. (Prentis’s transportation platform notes those figures bespeak estimated annualized worth based connected a contracted interest adjacent to 20% of savings realized, not recognized revenue, and are “performance-dependent and taxable to last execution.”)

By its ain account, Prentis says its Hive-32B exemplary outperforms rivals, including OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6, connected 2 computer-use benchmarks: WindowsAgentArena, which measures end-to-end task completion connected existent Windows applications; and ScreenSpot-v2, which tests a model’s quality to find the close on-screen control.

In its transportation deck, the institution argues its borderline comes from moving a overmuch smaller, cheaper model. In fact, it claims astir 10 times little outgo per task than frontier APIs, saying it’s much economical to deploy crossed mundane workflows. TechCrunch hasn’t independently verified the company’s benchmark results.

The startup is betting that automating mundane bureau tasks volition soon outpace coding arsenic AI’s biggest usage case, but it’s a crowded market. Anthropic, Open AI, and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines are besides moving connected processing AI agents for machine use, 1 of sources said. Anthropic has besides been acquiring endowment successful the class straight — it bought the Seattle computer-use startup Vercept earlier this year, folding successful its founders and shutting down its product.

Prentis didn’t respond to TechCrunch’s petition for comment.

Ritankar Das, CEO of Prantis, is besides the laminitis of Titan, a holding institution that builds and operates AI companies. Das, present 31, was UC Berkeley’s youngest University Medalist successful more than a century, graduating astatine 18 with a treble large successful bioengineering and chemic biology earlier earning a master’s successful biomedical engineering astatine Oxford.

He founded Titan successful 2014 aft dropping retired of an AI PhD programme astatine Cambridge, wherever he’d been a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Das has described Titan arsenic an intentional throwback to an old-fashioned holding-company exemplary similar Berkshire Hathaway, 1 that’s funded by its ain exits alternatively than extracurricular constricted partners.

Other businesses launched and operated by Titan see AI-powered virtual attraction supplier Tala Health, which raised a $100 cardinal seed circular past year, and Forta Health, an autism attraction startup that raised $55 million led by Insight Partners successful 2024. Titan-founded illness prediction institution Dascena was acquired by CirrusDx successful 2022.

Prentis is simply a broadside task of sorts for its 2 different co-founders. Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner, said past period that helium was stepping down from Microsoft’s committee aft astir a decennary to spell “founder mode” connected Manas AI, an AI drug-discovery startup he’s besides backing; helium was an aboriginal OpenAI capitalist and co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleyman earlier Microsoft absorbed astir of that squad successful 2024.

Pincus, the Zynga founder, present runs the concern steadfast Reinvent Capital with Hoffman arsenic a elder adviser, and published a memoir, “Life astatine the Speed of Play,” past month.

Prentis has already hired much than 25 employees, including researchers who antecedently worked astatine OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Tencent and Alibaba, according to its website.