Prentis Aims to Raise $100M at $1B Valuation for AI Automation Lab
Prentis, a new artificial intelligence research lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman and Marc Pincus, is in talks to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation. The company focuses on training models that automate routine office workflows using computer-use agents. Prentis has already signed contracts worth up to $50 million with customers across industries like healthcare and manufacturing. The startup claims its Hive-32B model outperforms competitors such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 on key benchmarks, while also being significantly more cost-effective for deployment in everyday tasks. Prentis is positioning itself to capitalize on the growing demand for AI automation beyond coding applications. However, it faces stiff competition from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines, which are all developing similar computer-use agents. The market remains highly competitive despite Prentis's early traction.
Topics: AI automation enterprise software funding