I’m Noah, the founder of Instinct. Instinct is a personal agent that we’ve been building for the past few months. The interface is simple: there are no new interfaces. You can text or call it. It's trained to use a phone and a computer in the same way that humans do. Instinct combines simplicity with extreme capability. I’m thrilled with everything our early users are doing with Instinct. 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. We want to make Instinct the best personal agent for all of you. It’s available in an invite-only beta program while we’re actively bringing up more compute. I’m excited to see what you all do with it. t.co/lVra3kd4TT

Both valued at $2.5 Billion today: Linear, having crossed $100 million ARR with 177% net revenue retention. Instinct, the viral AI assistant that launched last week.

Instinct, the viral AI assistant, has already raised $350 million, including a new round that values the startup at $2.5 billion. t.co/4Yf73rB1gE

when introduced to @noahrshinn, @pranavreddy @mvernal @btaylor had already concluded “hard yes.” exciting! then I found out he wanted to do general consumer AI…daunting over lunch I was a convert. lucky to work w/ppl wiser and braver than me. love Noah & the Instinct product. t.co/nl7YryafZp

My takeaway is that Instinct is going to sell user data Instinct needs a $100B+ outcome to justify a $2.5B val But, consumers don't pay for AI. ChatGPT has 1B users, and only makes ~$8b/yr from user subs The only path to enough revenue is monetizing user data t.co/ogishgnGwX

Instinct has had the best consumer product launch strategy since Uber. This happened in 4 parts: 1) Exclusivity: it is invite only 2) Hype: lots of folks writing on X (including by me) 3) Mystery: who is the team? Who are the founders? Have they already raised? 4) A dash of fear: is this too powerful? How do they use my data? YOLO?

A few predictions for how Instinct plays out: - Stays free. The massive $$ isn’t for training models, it's for subsidizing growth. Free is an enormous advantage in B2C but needs lots of capital. SV has knighted Instinct, and soaking up that capital makes it near impossible for another startup to offer a free product at scale. Meanwhile, Instinct figures out how to become sticky (data access, nfx through group chats, etc.) - Takes over your phone. Unlike the labs, Instinct doesn't need to win knowledge work (required to fund training the next generation of models). It just needs to win personal/social. That narrows the product surface a LOT. Thought experiment: if you didn't have a job, could you run your entire life from your phone? Probably. Most people do this. Imo Instinct feels undifferentiated atm despite the VC glaze, but relentless focus could let it pull far ahead. Eventually, instead of using most apps you ask Instinct. On-device models accelerate this: serving costs approach zero while increasing access to phone data. - Monetizing via transactions. Agentic commerce is inevitable. Even today, a primary use case for Instinct is to buy stuff: making appointments, booking flights, ordering groceries, etc. If Instinct becomes THE personal agent, it knows what you need and when. Scale -> leverage. Businesses will give up a % to transact with it. Apple Pay does ~10T in transaction volume btw. Will be fun to see how this tweet ages

3 news stories today: - Linear, founded in 2019, at $100M ARR and 177% NRR valued at $2.5B (tender offer), 7 years after launch - Instinct, a personal assistant app, valued at $2.5 billion 7 days after launch (metrics unknown) - Headspace (previously valued at $3B in 2021) acquired by Sword Health for $200M-$300M Make what you will of this situation, but valuations and eventual outcomes are not that correlated. Of the 3, I only use Linear.

Instinct is a personal agent that works. There are lots of personal agents. But we think Instinct is special because it really works — we want it to be able to do everything that a human could: use a phone, browse the web, make a note, take a call. We want Instinct to work for everyone. There’s a lot of companies building “AI for Enterprise” (and we invest in lots of those too!) but there doesn’t exist a proactive, capable product that tries to AI for the rest of us. I met Noah for the first time last August. By reference, and by first impression, he was obviously exceptional: Noah is down-to-earth, quietly competitive, and absurdly focused. He went from an undergraduate at Northeastern to industry-moving agent research shockingly quickly. @mvernal and I knew immediately we had to work with him. When Noah texted that he was raising a round, I flew back in early to talk to him— we’re really lucky he picked us. For the last ten months, I’ve spent almost every other Friday at the Instinct office. The Instinct team is small and opinionated. It’s a group that takes the responsibility of building the world’s personal agent very seriously but with joy. The reception we’ve had is a reflection of the thought and care that the team has put into every detail of how Instinct thinks about and talks to you. We @conviction are so proud to work with Instinct and Noah, and excited for what Instinct will do for all of you.

Whichever VC rebranded Poke to Instinct is a genius

Instinct is the first AI product I’ve used that is truly proactively helpful It’s already checking me into flights, reminding me about reservations I forgot to cancel, etc t.co/GrQIooXP3d

my dad sent me a bunch of videos of him skiing with an edit brief: specific background track, remove wind noise, trim parts out. i asked Instinct to remind me to do this later, and it went “sure, but i can just do this for you!” and it did! my dad, who has yet to use chatgpt:

i don't want to be overly harsh but my first 30 seconds of instinct involved filing a bug. i looked into it further bc $350 million is a lot of money i have some thoughts + predictions: 1. investors are betting consumers are willing to sell their data if the product is engaging enough, the terms let instinct train on your inbox, messages, screen, and location 2. to raise this much money, the thesis must be that consumer agents will have an inherently different model layer + inference stack than enterprise agents 3. product will be free for a long time 4. instinct is extremely fast, my guess is that the team spent a lot of cycles working on this, they probably have reserved compute with smaller fine tuned open source models and its not an api wrapper i'm just surprised it was a significant early bet given that previous consumer agent attempts have failed. the last week, all investors have been hyping it up and many said its just because they are invested, but i think to put that much money behind it, these investors just must actually like the product. i am looking forward to using it over the next week

more fun facts about Noah Shinn, founder of Instinct - * high school track star turned ultramarathoner * exceptional snowboarder, but refuses to wear a helmet * pathologically competitive, will win consumer through Instinct t.co/Kf6QTePwun

Asked Instinct to find me a girlfriend last week, still single today. This shit is literally unusable

Thrilled to be an early user of @noahrshinn's Instinct. I spent today some time working in their office today. it's a very lean team, intensely focused, on very few things. The product experience is a direct result of Noah's superpower: *relentless focus* on what matters most. And he nailed it. No new app. No new website. Nobody wakes up wanting to "use AI". You wake up to live your life. Instinct meets you where you already live it: text or call your phone. For me it gives back time. Paying bills, booking travel, buying groceries... handled, without being tethered to a screen. More time with the people I love. We'll look back at the last 40 years as the era humanity was chained to screens. Instinct sets us free. Congrats to team on sharing their vision with the world today. And to Noah - athlete, mathlete, and one of the most thoughtful builders I know.

agree with the attached post and I take the other side on all the “Instinct at $2.5b is clubhouse / bubble behavior” takes: 1. we all obviously want the product that Instinct is building towards (magical, proactive agent that has full context on your life and constantly helps). not just VCs, everyone has tasks they want help with 2. the product, even if given away for free now or even forever, is long-term highly monetizable via being in the flow of transactions or subs for premium features 3. so this is clearly eventually an enormous market that will have a huge winner or multiple large winners. 4. if not Instinct / other startups, then who else wins this? Meta, Google, Apple, OAI, Ant have varying levels of huge distribution edge, but I probably bet on the highly-focused, single modality startup every time vs those guys. still Apple’s game to lose but they’re showing no signs of life yet 5. if you believe that Instinct has the ingredients to grow cheaply (multiplayer works or they become a household name / default like chatgpt did) then making an extremely expensive bet like this feels very reasonable given the product quality (and apparently team quality) 6. many other startups have taken stabs at this end goal of the magical personal agent from different angles, targeting different demographics. I believe several of them can win 7. using tons of capital to subsidize costs, aggregate talent, and crowd out competitors has been an effective strategy in past consumer products. makes sense for Instinct to pursue this path

Exclusive: The new AI assistant rocketing across Silicon Valley, called Instinct, is raising $250 million at a $2.5 billion valuation. t.co/55q0jpV9jw

yo this instinct agent data shit crazy, it really logged into my Gmail and sent 10 emails to my no contact ex

JUST IN: AI startup Instinct raises $350 million total, hitting a $2.5 billion valuation just one year after launching, amid mounting privacy concerns over its life-organizing AI assistant.

Instinct is raising a $250 million Series B co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark Conviction and Greenoaks also involved t.co/vrirJssa43

Instinct is pretty good. Turns out the missing ingredients in 2021 were proactivity and context. We’ve come a long way t.co/obEl14N87D

I am happy to roll my eyes at most tech valuations but I'm a buyer at $2.5B for Instinct. 3rd "holy shit" moment for me of the AI era: ChatGPT, Claude Code, and Instinct. Props @noahrshinn

Watching what the team at Instinct has built on Linq’s messaging infrastructure has been insane t.co/xrl3ipvQfe

A hot new AI agent called Instinct that reads and answers messages and books flights was valued at $500 million earlier in August, sources say. Now its valuation has skyrocketed to $2.5 billion in another new round just a few weeks later. Read more: t.co/bvRxniWMOC

As Instinct's first user I'm exceptionally excited for the company's (official) launch. It's the iPhone moment for agents. Instinct delights users in the way that's easiest for them (instead of telling them to adjust to new paradigms), and atop all this, they've made huge strides on the research side. They're simply blowing every competitor away on cost and TTFT (just try it!) This product is like if you took OpenClaw and abstracted away all the hard technical stuff, did the technical stuff to perfection, and served it in the most palatable way possible. Sort of like... what the iPhone did to edge computing And of course, they are cooking up some amazing new features, for which I couldn't be more excited. Congratulations to my good friend Noah and the rest of team at Instinct.

instinct is amazing has been extremely fun seeing noah constantly iterate with taste and technical depth grateful to be a small part of the journey and so excited for more people to feel the magic! t.co/2SSN5lGR1f

Holy sh*t Instinct raising at a $2.5B val It's an AI personal assistant you text and tbh I've had a few genuinely magical experiences w/ it But still invite-only + not charging as far as I can tell, so have to assume pre-revenue at $2.5B... t.co/vKseLOaSln t.co/WUOYQGmtdX

Instinct has already made its way into my personal life in a way I’ve never before trusted AI with, from booking my flights to cancelling subscriptions. Proud to back @noahrshinn and Instinct — the team and their vision are fantastic and one-of-a-kind! t.co/AAFNzRk1V2

is instinct just poke

New interest in personal agents like Instinct is driven by the fact they can actually do things now Agents that take action, particularly in payments are opening people’s eyes to what’s possible when you empower your agents to act on your behalf Timeline is accelerating

I love this branding. Clear, concise, no fluff. Very into it. Website is great. t.co/AL0fKdaj8S t.co/i0yowzPc1J

Have you seen a more locked-in founder? Instinct is one of the more exciting AI products I’ve used recently. There’s no doubt copycats will be launched in no time. But instinct will continue to standout and be better imo t.co/ivMO0urdNS

All the personal agent startups looking at the Instinct round

Hottest new AI on the block . Feels like Instinct came out of nowhere, raising a $250 million Series B at a $2.5 billion valuation in a round co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark. t.co/N3KiJpzflG

Flock Safety acquires Instinct AI to bring consumer agents to the police force

AI assistant Instinct is raising a $250M Series B co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark at a $2.5B valuation, bringing its total raised to $350M (@kateclarktweets / Wall Street Journal) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Instinct is a good product. Being valued as much as Linear is interesting. t.co/hrnfO8z5i6

instinct has the same valuation as linear? how?

Instinct is the AI we were all promised: easy, useful, and personalized. Congrats Noah & the Instinct team on building something truly magical! t.co/ensV9p1nVx

every consumer will have an agent. will people use their own identity for communication or their agent's identity? have been thinking of this question, and face this choice often when I give tasks to my agents. a useful way to think about this is to study how people with an EA solve it. when you'll use your agent's identity - when you can delegate a task completely and don't want to be in loop - when you don't want to risk your identity/reputation on the task you've delegated - when you want to signal that an EA/agent is managing your calendar and tasks (short term) when you'll use your own identity - when you need to own the decision communicated - when the other person requires your authority/trust - when you want to make the other person feel important hence it depends on how much accountability, stakes, and reputation is attached to the communication. what else? outcomes as a result 1. players like agentmail can win by being your agent's identity 2. players like slashy, town, avec, extra can win by helping you use your own identity/email 3. personal assistants like instinct are encompassing both currently

hii besties can i have an invite to instinct?

People comparing Instinct to Clubhouse are off the mark - an agentic interface to the internet is inevitable, remains to be seen whether the big winner is an incumbant consumer company with broad distribution or a startup. That said having setup and run an openclaw agent for Patron and a Hermes agent for family, the cost and process to setup an agent harness is real. So hats off to the Instinct team for swinging big to lower the barrier by making it free, and being patient to find the right business model to offset the high cost to run computer use agents on behalf of individual people. My guess is Instinct power users are probably consuming $10+/day of tokens and inference cost but across all early users it's probably a much lower average, and if it is already transacting for people there is an obvious business model there to offset that. I do generally believe that it will be hard to convince 100m+ people that you have to pay $10/month to use the internet (unless you are wireless/broadband provider). So ChatGPT charging people for a premium subscription probably won't be the ultimate best way to monetize their distributed consumer audience.

Instinct, a product I only heard about a few weeks ago, and have only been using for a week, raised at $2.5 billion If anyone needs an invite I’ve got 2 left, comment below and I’ll DM a link to the best two comments t.co/PQLthyOtdv

Instinct has become a core part of my life - reminding me of important tasks, proactively surfacing meeting conflicts, helping me buy sheets, pay bills, etc. I couldn’t be more excited for @noahrshinn and the team. Glad to be an extremely small part of the journey! t.co/fyPjCc2SlX

Introducing OpenInstinct: an open-source alternative to Instinct, the viral AI assistant now valued at $2.5B. Text it or call it to search the live web, use a real browser, run tools, work with files, remember context, and stay online 24/7 on your VM. t.co/YhU8jNIT3S

Instinct is insanely good @noahrshinn - just found me an impossible to get tee time at st Andrew's. Had Grok Bot on it for 3 days, nada. King shit.

should i do a segment battling grok bot vs. instinct but its just them doing admin tasks i've been avoiding like booking a dentist appointment, canceling subscriptions, and buying car insurance

My current favourite use case of instinct is tying it up to my myfitnesspal and logging food through it. Far less painful than the app itself lol.

aight who can get me Instinct code? i still use openclaw roughly 50-100 times per day & don't really understand what it could do beyond what openclaw is already doing for me

Instinct So far i have booked date nights, movie tickets, doctor appointments, swimming classes for kids, dinner reservation, planned a vacation and booked it, booked escape room etc via Instinct. i am a power user of AI so this is somewhat expected and have saved many many hours what is unexpected ? i invited my wife few hours ago and she is talking to it constantly and sorting all sorts of chores and sending me screenshot. she doesn't even type, just talks to it and calls it "bud"

Can somebody please invite me to Instinct so I can see why a company that launched last week is worth $2.5B?

The founder of Instinct is Noah. They just raised at a $2.5B valuation. Meanwhile, I’m the founder of @HeyNoahAI for whatever that's worth :)

My favorite thing about Instinct so far is it replies with emojis on msg and talks like a friend Interaction is way more fun and natural than any general agent (NOT an investor)

AI agent startup Instinct was valued at $500 million a few weeks ago. Now Benchmark and Index Ventures are in talks to lead another new round of at least $200 million at over $2.5 billion. With @_IainMartin. t.co/8kUDgh0HUC

Epic founder reveal Congrats to @noahrshinn on bringing us closer to the promise of personal AI I was pretty no interfaces pilled but beta testing Instinct this summer has me doubling down on this direction Excited to see how the journey unfolds! t.co/yQu4JGDsf4

t.co/VbShKUTG4K is so insane, I asked it to find me student accommodations for my masters in germany, it sent messages to 18 owners within 5 minutes and now i have a video call lined up

Thrilled to be on @noahrshinn's Instinct. I spent today some time working in their office today. Shockingly lean team, intensely focused on very few things. The product experience is a direct result of Noah's superpower: *relentless focus* on what matters most. And he nailed it. No new app. No new website. Nobody wakes up wanting to "use AI". You wake up to live your life. Instinct meets you where you already live it: text or call your phone. For me it gives back time. Paying bills, booking travel, buying groceries... handled, without being tethered to a screen. More time with the people I love. We'll look back at the last 40 years as the era humanity was chained to screens. Instinct sets us free. Congrats to team on sharing their vision with the world today. And to Noah - athlete, mathlete, and one of the most thoughtful builders I know.

i feel like everything that’s going to happen over the next 3 months is pretty predictable, but the people who move fastest always win same thing happened with OpenClaw, now Instinct, and next…

INSTINCT RAISES $250M AT $2.5B VALUATION AI assistant startup Instinct is raising a $250M Series B co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark, valuing the company at $2.5B, per WSJ. The round brings Instinct’s total funding to roughly $350M since its 2025 founding. Instinct is building an AI assistant that can handle tasks like emails, calendars, bookings and purchases through calls or texts. Some early users have raised privacy concerns, as the product requires access to sensitive personal data and its terms allow user data to be used for model training.

you can just build your own instinct agent. over imessage, answers in seconds, watches things for you around the clock. chuck this tweet at fable and it'll get it done in an afternoon. then you can worry less about what's happening with your email data. every piece exists off the shelf: - sendblue: imessage api. typing indicators, tapbacks, read receipts - cloudflare agents: the harness. one durable object = your assistant, alive forever, wakes in ms - cf sandbox: code execution - cf artifacts: durable storage that speaks git, memory you can read and diff - cf dynamic workers: triggers - cf agent memory: culls chat history into actual memory - browserbase: browser with real fingerprints for logged-in stuff run opus 4.8 on low thinking. ~2 second replies. the speed is what makes instinct feel good. pay for fast mode if you want. triggers, "when x happens, do y", three levels: 1. a dynamic worker polls the narrowest endpoint that changes. deterministic diff, did it change or not. no tokens, costs nothing. 2. on change only: one cheap llm eval. does this match what i asked for? 3. on match only: wake the main agent, it decides whether you'd actually want a text. cull old conversations periodically into curated markdown files, and keep the verbatim history somewhere the agent can search. build context as just [memory files + recent messages]. compaction and long-term memory, same system. never let the main agent do work. make it talk and delegate. subagents are trivial on cf agents: spawn another durable object with a brief and a callback, hand it a sandbox if it needs compute. gmail, easy for a personal app. spin up a gcp project, enable the gmail api. now it triages your inbox and drafts replies you approve. and the only thing reading your mail is a worker 'you' wrote, holding a token you can revoke. anyway, mine is currently looking for used surfboards and notifying me when it finds something good

Agentic internet usage is only going to be broadly adopted if it is accessible, and while Grok Bot has a really clean onboarding and agent management experience today, it is inaccessible to most consumers given the Cursor or Grok subscription gate. Instinct model to offer for free, work out the right user experience then scale out (given the obvious cost of supporting each user) makes sense, looks like they will be able to let a lot more consumers in soon as they continue to refine and improve the experience in parallel.

using Instinct to bypass paywalled WSJ articles about Instinct

AI ASSISTANT STARTUP INSTINCT RAISES $250M SERIES B AT $2.5B VALUATION LED BY INDEX VENTURES, BENCHMARK

anyone got an Instinct invite for me? t.co/qiTm9Hljow