Instinct, a startup founded just last year and led by 23-year-old Noah Shinn, has raised $350 million in total funding at a $2.5 billion valuation, the company told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
The $250 million Series B round was co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark. Instinct offers an AI assistant that helps users organize their lives — from planning cross-country road trips and buying groceries and concert tickets to cancelling unwanted subscriptions. Users connect the app to their devices and communicate with the AI agent via texts and calls.
"I'm thrilled with everything our early users are doing with Instinct," Shinn wrote in a tweet. "They've told us they've planned cross-country road trips, bought weekly groceries and concert tickets, and cancelled hundreds of dollars of subscriptions. Someone's even planning their wedding with Instinct."
The company, formally operated by Spear Street Technology, is currently in private beta but has already generated massive hype and significant privacy concerns. Online, users have worried about the overly generous permissions the app requires and its terms of use, which some have described as potentially invasive.
The rapid valuation ascent reflects the intense investor appetite for personal AI agents — AI systems that can take actions on behalf of users across multiple applications. This category has emerged as one of the hottest investment themes in AI, with multiple startups commanding billion-dollar valuations within months of launching.
