Instinct Raises $1B Series C at $10B Valuation as AI Agent Demand Surges

Instinct, a consumer AI agent startup, has raised $1 billion in Series C funding at a $10 billion valuation, just one month after announcing a financing round that valued the company at $2.5 billion.

The new round includes investment from Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital and Coatue. Instinct confirmed the Series C after The Information reported earlier this month that the startup was in talks to raise funding at a $10 billion valuation.

The rapid increase in Instinct’s valuation comes only weeks after the company’s previous financing and shortly after its invite-only service launched in August 2026. The fundraising reflects strong investor interest in a new generation of consumer AI agents designed to perform tasks rather than answer questions.

Instinct Wants Its AI Agent to Handle Everyday Tasks

Instinct is designed to take action on a user’s behalf, including booking travel and restaurant reservations, making purchases, paying bills, cancelling subscriptions, ordering groceries, and carrying out research.

When a user gives Instinct a task, the service can use its own phone number and computer to complete it. The company has also introduced a concierge feature that can make phone calls for users, including scheduling appointments with businesses that do not offer online booking.

Another feature, called the trusted person network, allows one user’s Instinct agent to coordinate plans with agents belonging to friends or other trusted contacts.

Those capabilities also require users to share significant amounts of personal information with the service. Instinct’s original privacy policy raised concerns about the breadth of information it covered, although the company has since updated it.

Competition Grows in Personal AI Agents

Instinct is also facing competition from Meta’s Muse AI assistant, which offers similar agent capabilities while integrating with Meta’s existing social platforms. Muse can perform tasks such as monitoring and summarising Instagram direct messages and Facebook Groups, as well as tracking Marketplace listings.

Muse has reached the top of U.S. app store rankings and has accumulated millions of downloads. Instinct currently communicates with users primarily through SMS and text messaging and does not yet offer a mobile app.

Instinct has not disclosed user totals or detailed growth metrics. Its ability to secure another large funding round, however, indicates that investors are backing the company’s approach to personal AI agents despite growing competition in the category.

Founder Noah Shinn said Instinct is being developed as a personal agent that can handle the nuances of everyday life. He said the new funding will help the company make the service available to more people and continue developing its personal AI technology.