Instinct raises $1B Series C at $10B valuation

It’s been only a month since AI assistant startup Instinct announced a fundraise valuing it at $2.5 billion, and the company has now raised another $1 billion, from investors including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital and Coatue, valuing it at $10 billion. The Information first reported the fundraising effort earlier this month; in a press release Monday, Instinct confirmed this was a Series C round — a quick growth round for a startup that launched its invite-only service in August 2026.

The rapid fundraising reflects investor enthusiasm for a new class of consumer AI agents that can not only answer questions and hold conversations, but actually complete tasks for users — booking travel and restaurant reservations, making purchases, paying bills, canceling subscriptions, conducting research, and ordering groceries, among other chores. When asked to perform a task, Instinct uses its own phone number and computer. The company recently added new features, including “concierge,” which can make phone calls on a user’s behalf to book appointments at places without online booking, and a “trusted person network” that lets one person’s Instinct agent coordinate plans with their friends’ agents.

Those capabilities come at a cost: some users are questioning how much personal information they must disclose to gain access, and Instinct’s initial privacy policy drew particular criticism for its overreach before being updated. Despite its viral adoption, Instinct now faces fresh competition from Meta’s own AI assistant, Muse, which offers many of the same features plus deep integration with Meta’s social products — letting Muse also monitor and summarize a user’s Instagram DMs or Facebook Groups and keep an eye on Marketplace listings. Those capabilities have pushed Muse to the top of U.S. app stores, where it has been downloaded millions of times. Instinct, which communicates with users over SMS, doesn’t have a mobile app yet, and the startup hasn’t shared user numbers or growth metrics — though its investors are clearly seeing something they like.

Instinct declined to make founder Noah Shinn available for an interview, but shared a statement attributed to him: “We’re building Instinct to be the best personal agent that can handle the deeply personal nuances of everyday life. 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.”

Why it matters

Consumer AI agents are being valued less like chat apps and more like operating-system-level bets, and the speed of Instinct’s raises — two rounds in a month, a fourfold valuation jump — signals investors expect a narrow window to lock in the category’s eventual winner.