A text-based AI assistant called Instinct is reportedly in talks to raise $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation, more than four times the $2.5 billion figure investors placed on it just a month ago. The company, founded by 23-year-old Noah Shinn, launched only in February.
Instinct works inside iMessage or WhatsApp rather than through its own app, letting users text it instructions the way they would a human assistant. It’s still invite-only, which has added to the buzz around it.
John Borthwick of Betaworks, an early investor in Hugging Face who has no financial stake in Instinct, said the product stands out from competitors like OpenClaw because of how it communicates. “You can use OpenClaw in iMessage, but they’re clunky experiences — this is the first AI assistant I’ve recommended my wife and kids, who aren’t techies, should use,” Borthwick said.
Christopher Rim, CEO of Command Education, said he’d never bothered hiring a human assistant because managing one felt like more work than doing tasks himself. After using Instinct for a few weeks, he described it handling logistics for a Middle East trip without being asked — arranging airport car service tied to an Emirates first-class perk he didn’t know he had, notifying his hotel of his arrival, and reorganizing his meeting schedule to cut down on Dubai traffic.
The Privacy Problem
Like any digital assistant, Instinct requires access to email, messaging, calendar, location and other personal data. What isn’t clear is how much of that data the company retains or what it does with it. Instinct did not respond to a request for comment on the record from the New York Post.
Matthew Ammirati, who runs multiple businesses and now relies on Instinct to manage more than 500 emails a day, said he built in restrictions after bad experiences with other AI models. “I’m not letting it delete anything,” he said. He has, however, given the assistant permission to read and write emails on his behalf.
When asked directly what large language model powers it, Instinct declined to answer. The company did offer a general assurance about data handling.
“Everything stored about you is encrypted at rest, and what gets indexed from your connected accounts (email, calendar, messages) is used only for your experience — never to train models.”
That non-answer on the underlying model, paired with a scripted line on data security, is the kind of thing that should give any user pause before handing over access to their inbox, calendar and location.
Real-World Glitches
The system isn’t flawless. Reservation platform Resy temporarily deactivated one user’s account after their Instinct assistant attempted to book a table at 4 Charles in Manhattan’s West Village 200 times within a single hour.
There’s also a broader question worth asking as these tools multiply: what happens to restaurants, airlines and everyone else once every customer has an AI agent negotiating on their behalf simultaneously.
Instinct’s rivals, including a product called Poke, have launched similar assistants but remain valued far lower. Whether Instinct’s momentum reflects a genuinely superior product or simply the latest overheated bet in the AI investment cycle is still an open question — one investors are staking $10 billion on before most of the public has even been allowed to try it.
