Prentis, the AI research lab founded in April by Ritankar Das alongside Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, is courting investors for a $100 million round that would value the company at $1 billion. The trio, each a heavyweight in technology and venture circles, is betting on a niche that many see as the next frontier of artificial intelligence: agents that can operate a computer the way a human does.
Unlike large‑language models that excel at text generation, Prentis builds "computer‑use" models designed to move through the menus, forms and screens of everyday office applications. Its flagship Hive‑32B model reportedly outperforms OpenAI’s GPT‑5.4 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 on two industry benchmarks—WindowsAgentArena, which measures end‑to‑end task completion on real Windows software, and ScreenSpot‑v2, which tests a model’s ability to locate the correct on‑screen control. The company claims the model delivers comparable results at roughly one‑tenth the cost per task of leading frontier APIs.
Early traction backs the technical promise. Prentis has inked contracts worth up to $50 million with a mix of customers, including a healthcare‑management service organization, a manufacturing firm and a clothing‑goods producer. Those deals are structured around a performance‑based fee equal to 20 percent of the savings the AI delivers, not conventional revenue recognition. Investor materials suggest the startup could reach a $75 million annualized run rate by the third quarter of this year, assuming the contracts execute as projected.
The market for AI‑driven office automation is heating up. Anthropic, OpenAI and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab are all developing similar agents. Anthropic recently acquired Seattle‑based Vercept, a computer‑use startup, and folded its team into its own effort. Prentis distinguishes itself by running a smaller, cheaper model, a strategy it touts as more economical for widespread deployment across routine workflows.
Prentis’s leadership brings deep expertise to the table. Das, who earned a double major at UC Berkeley at age 18 and later founded the holding company Titan, has already overseen AI ventures such as Tala Health and Forta Health. Hoffman, a Greylock partner and early OpenAI investor, recently stepped down from Microsoft’s board to focus on founder‑mode projects, including Manas AI. Pincus runs the investment firm Reinvent Capital and recently published a memoir, "Life at the Speed of Play." Together, they have assembled a research team of more than 25 engineers and scientists drawn from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Tencent and Alibaba.
While the fundraising talks are ongoing, Prentis has not responded to requests for comment. Industry observers note that the company’s claims have yet to be independently verified, particularly the benchmark results and cost‑per‑task calculations. Nevertheless, the combination of high‑profile backers, early customer contracts and a clear market focus positions Prentis as a contender in the race to automate the day‑to‑day tasks that still dominate most office workers’ time.
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