Instinct

AI Agents · Consumer AI

Funding

AI assistant Instinct raises $250M Series B at $2.5B valuation

The four-month-old app's valuation rocketed roughly fivefold in weeks, powered by viral buzz rather than disclosed revenue.

• Instinct raised $250 million in a Series B round co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark, valuing the startup at $2.5 billion and lifting its total funding to $350 million.
• Founded in 2025 by 23-year-old former Sierra researcher Noah Shinn, Instinct is a private-beta AI agent that connects to a user's apps and devices, handling tasks like booking travel or canceling subscriptions via text or phone call.
• The new valuation is roughly five times the $500 million mark Instinct carried just weeks earlier, one of the fastest repricings among AI startups this year.
• The round follows an earlier $75 million Series A led by Kleiner Perkins, meaning Instinct closed two funding rounds within months of launching.
• The product remains invitation-only and requires broad permissions -- including email, messaging, screen and location access -- with terms allowing the company to store and train models on that data.
• Some early users have reported reliability problems, including a costly restaurant-booking mistake and an agent that retained emails after being disconnected, fueling privacy concerns online.
• The deal shows investors pricing personal-agent startups on viral growth and founder profile rather than revenue, a bet that access to sensitive user data can be monetized without losing trust.