Prentis, an AI research lab launched in April and focused on computer-use models, is in talks to raise US$100 million at a US$1 billion valuation, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

The company was co-founded by Ritankar Das, Reid Hoffman, and Mark Pincus.

Prentis is training models to operate computers for routine office work. The startup has signed contracts worth up to US$50 million with customers in healthcare management services, manufacturing, and apparel and goods production.

Those contract figures reflect estimated annualized value based on a fee equal to 20% of savings realized, rather than recognized revenue, and depend on performance.

Prentis claimed its Hive-32B model performed better than rivals on two computer-use benchmarks, but those results have not been independently verified.

The company is entering a market where Anthropic, OpenAI, and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab are also developing AI agents that can use computers.

Prentis has hired more than 25 employees, including researchers who previously worked at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Tencent, and Alibaba.

🔗 Source: TechCrunch