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Instinct

Category: AI Agents

Viral invite-only personal AI agent that you text or call, trained to use a phone and computer like a human to organize your life across apps and devices. Instinct was founded in 2025. The company is led by Noah Shinn. Based in San Francisco, California, USA. Team size: 1-10. Total funding raised: $350M. Latest round: Series B. Key investors include Index Ventures, Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins, Conviction, Greenoaks.

Founded
2025
Headquarters
San Francisco, California, USA
Team size
1-10
Total funding
$350M

Value proposition

A personal AI assistant that connects to your email, messaging, calendar, screen, audio and location, and acts proactively on your behalf — booking flights and reservations, cleaning up your inbox, arranging rides, handling shopping — via simple text or voice calls with no new interface.

Products and solutions

Instinct — an invite-only personal AI agent accessible via SMS/WhatsApp text or phone call, connects to email, messaging apps, calendar, device screen/audio/location, performs tasks like travel booking, restaurant reservations, inbox management, shopping, and subscription cancellation.

Unique value

"No new interfaces" — a proactive agent trained to use a phone and computer the way humans do, orchestrating off-the-shelf models with specialized fine-tuning and tool use; described by early users as "OpenClaw for normal people" and "like magic."

Target customer

Consumer individuals (currently a private-access group / waitlist), with early adoption among tech insiders and VCs.

Industries served

Consumer personal assistance / life organization (horizontal consumer AI agent)

Technology advantage

Orchestrates off-the-shelf foundation models with specialized fine-tuning and tool use; unusually capable and proactive at web-related tasks; core model trained to handle deeply personal nuances of everyday life; founder's research pedigree (Reflexion, τ-bench) in agentic LLM reasoning.

How they differentiate

Unlike chatbot-style assistants, Instinct is a proactive agent that operates a real phone/computer like a human, with no new interface (text/call only), and is unusually capable at web-related tasks; positioned as a more polished, consumer-friendly take on the OpenClaw category.

Main competitors

OpenClaw (personal AI assistant, founder joined OpenAI), Poke (messaging-based assistant, acquired by Cognition), Grok Bot (Elon Musk), also Hermes, Tasklet, Rabbit

Major milestones

Founded 2025 by Noah Shinn (Spear Street Technology registered April 2025), viral launch in private beta Aug 2026, raised $350M total at $2.5B valuation (Aug 2026), sparked privacy/ToS backlash among early testers.

Market positioning

One of the hottest personal-AI-agent startups of 2026; valuation rocketed from ~$100M to $2.5B in weeks amid a VC feeding frenzy, despite the product still being in private beta.

Geographic focus

United States (San Francisco); global consumer market

About Noah Shinn

Ex-Research Scientist at Sierra (customer-service AI company); Northeastern University undergrad; co-author of Reflexion (NeurIPS 2023, ~9,000 citations) and τ-bench (ICLR 2025); ML/PL research at Northeastern and MIT.

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