Instinct, an AI assistant startup that launched an invite-only service in August 2026, has raised $1 billion in a Series C round that values the company at $10 billion. The round included investors Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital and Coatue. The new funding was confirmed by Instinct in a press release on Monday, and news of the fundraising had been reported earlier this month by The Information.
The Series C comes just one month after Instinct announced a fundraise that valued it at $2.5 billion, a rapid jump in valuation for a young company. The back-to-back rounds reflect investor interest in a category of consumer AI agents that do more than answer questions and hold conversations. These agents can complete tasks for users, such as booking travel plans or restaurant reservations, making purchases, paying bills, canceling subscriptions, conducting tedious research and ordering groceries.
When asked to perform a task, Instinct uses its own phone number and computer. The company has recently rolled out additional features, including a concierge that can make phone calls on a user's behalf to manage things like appointments at places that do not offer online booking. It has also introduced a trusted person network that lets one person's Instinct agent coordinate plans with their friends' agents.
Instinct now faces fresh competition in the U.S. market from Meta's AI assistant, Muse. Muse offers many of the same capabilities and adds a system that can deeply integrate with Meta's social products. That allows Muse to handle tasks such as monitoring and summarizing a user's Instagram DMs or Facebook Groups and keeping an eye on Marketplace listings. Muse has climbed to the top of U.S. app stores, where it has been downloaded millions of times.
Instinct communicates with its users through SMS and texting and does not yet have a mobile app. The startup has not shared its user numbers or any growth metrics, but its investors are clearly seeing something they like. Instinct declined to offer interviews with founder Noah Shinn alongside the fundraising news.
In a statement attributed to Shinn and shared with the fundraising announcement, he said the company is building Instinct to be the best personal agent that can handle the deeply personal nuances of everyday life. He said the funding helps bring Instinct to more people and continue building the future of personal AI, adding that it is an exciting, creative time and the company is just getting started.
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