Prentiss, a new AI lab focused on computational models co-founded by serial entrepreneur Retankar Das and tech executives Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, is in talks to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
Founded in April, Prentis trains models that learn how office workers navigate daily workflows across documents and systems, with the goal of building AI agents that can control computers to automate those tasks.
Prentice is ostensibly developing an agency that can meet the needs of these customers without the need for humans to hunt for documents, such as automating the processing of insurance claims and customs refund exceptions.
The startup already has contracts worth up to $50 million with multiple customers, including healthcare management services organizations, manufacturers, and goods and clothing manufacturers, two people familiar with the discussions told TechCrunch. This is in line with investor materials obtained by TechCrunch that project an estimated annual run rate of $75 million by the third quarter of this year. (Prentice’s proposal documents say these numbers reflect an estimated annualized amount based on a contract fee equal to 20% of realized savings, not revenue recognized, and are “dependent on performance and subject to ultimate enforcement.”)
According to Prentis’ own accounts, its Hive-32B model outperforms competing products such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 on two computational benchmarks: WindowsAgentArena, which measures end-to-end task completion in real Windows applications, and ScreenSpot-v2, which tests the model’s ability to find appropriate on-screen controls.
The company claims in its pitch deck that its advantage lies in running a much smaller and cheaper model. In fact, they claim that the cost per task is approximately 10 times lower than the Frontier API, making it more economical to deploy throughout your daily workflow. TechCrunch has not independently verified the company’s benchmark results.
The startup is betting that automation of everyday office tasks will soon surpass coding as the biggest use case for AI, but the market is crowded. Anthropic, Open AI and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab are also working on developing AI agents for computers, one of the people said. Anthropic has also acquired talent directly in the field, acquiring Seattle computing startup Vercept earlier this year, bringing in its founders and shutting down the product.
Prentice did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Prentis CEO Ritankar Das is also the founder of Titan, a holding company that builds and operates AI companies. Das, now 31, is UC Berkeley’s youngest college medalist in more than a century, graduating with a double major in bioengineering and chemical biology at the age of 18 and then earning a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Oxford.
He founded Titan in 2014 after dropping out of the AI PhD program at Cambridge University as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Das described Titan as a deliberate throwback to the old-school holding company model of companies like Berkshire Hathaway, which is funded through its own exits rather than external limited partners.
Other businesses launched and operated by Titan include Tala Health, an AI-powered virtual care provider that raised $100 million in a seed round last year, and Forta Health, an autism care startup that raised $55 million in 2024 led by Insight Partners. Dascena, a disease prediction company founded by Titan, was acquired by CirrusDx in 2022.
Prentis is a side project of sorts with the other two co-founders. Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and partner at Greylock, announced last month that he was stepping down from Microsoft’s board after nearly a decade to enter “founder mode” at Manas AI, an AI drug discovery startup he also backs. He was an early investor in OpenAI and co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleyman before Microsoft absorbed most of the team in 2024.
Mr. Pincus, the Zynga founder, now runs the investment firm Reinvent Capital, with Mr. Hoffman as a senior advisor, and last month published a memoir, “Life at the Speed of Play.”
According to the company’s website, Prentice already employs more than 25 people, including researchers who previously worked at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Tencent and Alibaba.
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