Prentis, the new AI lab from Hoffman and Pincus, is chasing $100M

Prentis is a new AI startup backed by Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, and it's in talks to raise $100 million. The bet: automating routine computer tasks will soon outpace writing code as AI's biggest use case.

That's a pivot from the coding-fueled hype of the last couple years. Instead of building tools for developers, they're targeting the thousands of people who spend their days clicking through dashboards, copying data between apps, and doing the kind of repetitive work that eats up an afternoon. The idea is that AI can handle the mechanical parts of that — the clicks, the tabs, the copy-paste — faster and cheaper than a human can.

Hoffman and Pincus have been building AI companies for a while. This one is the latest iteration, and the $100M number is the size of the bet, not a guarantee. The market is crowded with agents and automation tools right now, and Prentis is placing a specific claim about which problem will win.

Why this matters for us: the people doing the routine computer work — admin, bookkeeping, ops, warehouse dispatch — are exactly the kind of folks the side-hustle economy runs on, and if a tool can do that faster, it could either save a small business a salary or put one more person out of work.