Viral AI agent Instinct raises $1B Series C at a $10B valuation

Instinct, the startup behind a viral consumer AI assistant, confirmed on September 28 a $1 billion Series C from investors including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital and Coatue, valuing the company at $10 billion, TechCrunch reported.

The round arrives roughly a month after Instinct announced a fundraise that valued it at $2.5 billion. News of the company’s fundraising efforts was reported earlier this month by The Information, and the company confirmed the Series C in a press release on Monday. For a startup that launched its invite-only service in August 2026, the cadence is unusually fast.

Instinct belongs to a new class of consumer AI agents that do more than answer questions and hold conversations: they get things done for their users, booking travel plans and restaurant reservations, making purchases, paying bills, canceling subscriptions, running 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 place phone calls on a user’s behalf for places that don’t offer 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 have to disclose to AI agents to unlock them, and Instinct’s initial privacy policy was particularly worrisome because of its overreach. The policy has since been updated.

Competition is closing in fast. Meta’s own AI assistant, Muse, offers many similar features plus a system that integrates deeply with Meta’s social products, letting it monitor and summarize Instagram DMs or Facebook Groups and keep an eye on Marketplace listings. That has sent Muse to the top of the U.S. app stores, where it has been downloaded millions of times.

Instinct, by contrast, communicates with users over SMS and texting and does not have a mobile app yet. The startup has also not shared its user numbers or any growth metrics — but its investors clearly see something they like. Instinct declined to offer interviews with founder Noah Shinn alongside the fundraising news, instead sharing 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.”

The question now is whether Instinct can hold onto its early momentum against a competitor with built-in distribution, and how much regulatory and user pushback the idea of an agent that spends your money and makes your calls will attract.