A Ten Billion Dollar Round and a Group Chat That Plans Itself

What people were saying

Two stories collided today. The first was the new agent-to-agent thing: your Instinct now negotiates with your friends' Instincts, collects availability, picks a slot, quotes a price per person, and waits for you to say go. @ethancole_ai used it to book a Friday night (food, drinks, movie, calendar invite, no "what time works for you" thread), and @undefinedKi walked through the update, including the part where it now has its own email address and chases confirmations without touching your inbox. @namratachawla_ noted she now emails her co-founder's Instinct directly, which is a sentence that would have read as nonsense in January.

The second story was the money. @Techmeme relayed the report that Instinct is seeking $1B at a $10B valuation, up from $2.25B less than a month ago, with Sequoia and Benchmark in talks. That is a steep up-round by any measure, and the quote-posts did not pretend otherwise.

The praise

The useful stuff was concrete. @RaoSumukh sent one message with no context and got a PNR pulled from email, a completed check-in, and boarding passes. @BackseatVC discovered an accidental feature: when flight wifi is bad, texting an agent is a functioning internet connection. @chiragbarjatya had it make director stamps, stamp agreements, mail them to the counterparty, and order protein for his mom via voice note. @jbahrdestefano made the broader case: premium card credits, telecom retention pricing, and insurance renewals all depend on customers not bothering, and agents always bother. @mlejva offered the shortest review of the day, which was essentially "stop coping."

The pushback

@frantzfries landed the sharpest jab: he has yet to see anything these assistants do that Codex or Claude can't do with the same prompt. @DennisonBertram argued there's no moat and said he's building a clone that watches their Twitter for feature parity. @narayananh reported it has gotten noticeably slower. @BradGroux emailed asking about what he says is a conflict between the service, the terms, and the privacy policy, and is waiting on a reply. And @anuatluru filed the day's most human complaint: it has ruined emoji reactions.

Notable anecdotes

@evankrasnick started off unimpressed (two airport van transfers, fine) and then found the actual use case: telling restaurants and a cocktail bar about a trip's occasion, done instantly. And @Midnight_Captl relayed that an NVIDIA director cited personal assistants as a reason usage is exploding, which is a strange place for a group chat scheduler to end up.