The Pulse
Instinct Raises $1 Billion at a $10 Billion Valuation
Instinct says it has raised an additional $1 billion in a Series C round backed by Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital and Coatue, valuing the company at $10 billion. The company’s personal AI agent remains in early access, with new features
AI.info Team · Written with AI · fact-checked ·
Instinct announced an additional $1 billion in its latest funding round on Monday, September 28, bringing the company’s valuation to $10 billion. Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital and Coatue participated, according to the company’s announcement. The financing puts a large bet behind a product Instinct is still expanding beyond its initial user base, and the release says the funding will help bring the service to more people.
A personal agent, still in early access
Instinct describes its product as an agent that can take everyday tasks from request to completion. Users can text or call it to plan a cross-country road trip, order weekly groceries or cancel subscriptions they have forgotten about. The company says the agent uses its own phone and computer to carry out the work. It says the product is still in early access and does not provide a user count or a date for broader availability.
Founder Noah Shinn framed the financing as support for wider access and continued product development.
“This funding helps us bring Instinct to more people and continue building the future of personal AI. It’s an exciting, creative time, and we're just getting started.”
Noah Shinn, founder of Instinct
Calls, bookings and coordination between agents
The company says it has released several product updates in recent months. Instinct Concierge is a white-glove service for high-touch tasks, including making phone calls and booking high-end services. Examples in the announcement include booking a restaurant that does not take online reservations, getting onto a dentist’s cancellation list and sorting out a cable bill.
Another feature, the Trusted Person Network, lets one user’s Instinct assistant communicate with another’s to coordinate plans. The company says assistants can also share files directly, including PDFs, images and spreadsheets. Its iMessage location-sharing feature can recognize when users arrive somewhere, offer suggestions based on personal preferences or answer questions.
Those features extend the product beyond answering questions: they put the agent in the path of calls, reservations, location information and personal files. The announcement describes what the assistant can do, but provides no figures on usage, reliability or how often users need to step in before a task is completed. It also gives no timetable for expanded access, instead directing people to sign up for updates.
Instinct’s privacy claims
Instinct says isolated sandboxes, short-lived local credentials and identity-signed tool execution have been built into the product from day one and are continually being improved. The company also describes a new “active detective system” intended to catch subtle hallucinations as the agent forms its response, before it generates or executes that response. The funding announcement does not provide independent test results for these safeguards.
The release does not detail the round’s terms or explain how Instinct will spend the capital. It says the financing is intended to help the company bring the product to more people while it continues building its personal AI service. For now, the announcement pairs a $1 billion round and a $10 billion valuation with a product the company still labels early access.