LinkedIn Co-founder Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus Bet on AI Automation Lab Prentis, Seeking $100 Million in Funding

BlockBeats News, July 25 — LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Zynga founder Mark Pincus are backing a new AI lab called Prentis. The company is seeking $100 million in funding, betting that the primary application scenarios for AI in the future will shift from code generation to large-scale automation of everyday computer tasks. Prentis believes that future AI agents will be increasingly used to handle repetitive tasks, such as automatically filling out expense reports, scheduling calendar meetings, organizing files, and more, rather than solely serving programming development. Its core perspective is that the volume of interactions generated by ordinary office workflows far exceeds that of developer workflows, and these understated yet high-frequency automation tasks could become the main market for AI agents. Meanwhile, AI programming agent company Cognition previously acquired Poke to enhance the interactive experience and personalization capabilities of its AI programming assistant, Devin, indicating that the industry is still competing around code generation. In contrast, Prentis has chosen to bet on broader desktop automation scenarios. Recently, Anthropic launched Opus 5, emphasizing a lower-cost and more open tool usage experience; NVIDIA and Mistral are promoting the development of open-weight models in the U.S., believing that open models can help drive practical AI automation applications. Market observers believe that as competition among AI agents enters the next phase, "low-profile agents" capable of reliably completing everyday repetitive tasks may achieve a larger user base compared to code generation tools.