Instinct

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The platform's own early signals for this company — hard-to-fake, and where one preceded a real raise, the measured lead.

• TLS certificate transparency 5 signals · latest 2026-10-08

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• bullish assessment Unattributed

  But it looks like Muse is, uh, Muse and Instinct are, have a much stronger product market fit than GrokBot.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  And in many ways, like, payments and inference are going to blend together for companies of the future.

• bullish prediction Unattributed

  We want to, like, create really good incentives and really sort of easy, streamlined workflows for people to start new companies and grow them successfully and make both lifestyle and venture-backed businesses on top of really good, reliable, and price-efficient infrastructure and, like, a marketplace that works. And I really want that future. And Stripe demonstrated that they've been wanting it and building towards it for many, many, many years.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  We were not thinking about that at all. I did really respect the company, do really respect it today. And of possible acquisition options for us, it was, I think, my top choice. And so it was, like, an interesting idea. And as we kind of fleshed out the reasons why it would make sense for both companies, it got more and more interesting. It was really clear how aligned they were with us kind of having autonomy over the brand and roadmap and product and keeping Open Router doing what it's already

• bullish prediction Unattributed

  OpenAI being able to do crazy good targeting on consumer, like, even better than, I think, Meta, which previously was, like, best in class for this just because they knew so much about you.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  people are going to it for real advice or shopping or trying to figure out exactly, you know, where they want to go or what they want to do. And those are great opportunities when you're in a discovery mode where ads are actually often a great answer to help you solve that.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  I've actually been really impressed with the open AI rollout of ads when I've actually ever seen an ad. It's very clearly labeled and it actually feels like a natural add to the conversation that I'm having.

• bullish prediction Unattributed

  they should be able to charge more and have higher conversion rates because they just know so much more about you as the user.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  they have real density now. So I think the last reported number a few days ago was 1.2 billion weekly active users, which is like a real density.

• neutral fact_claim Unattributed

  the vast majority still, the number one use case was coding and technical automation, even for these consumer assistant products like like Muse and Instinct.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  I think probably the biggest things on when we talk about pure consumer assistance, the biggest developments have been Muse and Instinct, I would say.

• bullish fact_claim Unattributed

  Instinct had announced like 100,000 users growing 10% day over day. They'd announced 40% of users connected a credit card in the first three weeks. And they were spending over $1,000 on average in their first month.

• bullish endorsement Unattributed

  It's clearly a really phenomenal team. The bet that Microsoft or any of the large providers would buy it, I think is very clear.

• bullish endorsement Unattributed

  I think if you can project out where it is. I think you have real downside protection. It's only raised like a billion and a half. It's clearly a really phenomenal team. The bet that Microsoft or any of the large providers would buy it, I think is very clear. So you've basically got a 50x upside on it being the WeChat of the West that we've all hoped for for many years. And downside protection on a 1x plus, I think.

• bullish prediction Unattributed

  we are so early innings here where there was open claw, there's the, like, you know, between now and Christmas, there's going to be like three more evolutions of the whole thing

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  there's implicitly some level of, yeah, we'll get all this travel revenue, but there's something more here

• bullish prediction Unattributed

  You'll be pretty bummed if you're only doing a billion dollars in restaurant bookings on instinct

• bearish assessment Unattributed

  if you think of it as travel monetization, you could get pretty angsty about market size here

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  my view is basically something like there can be an amazing independent player like Instinct.

• bullish endorsement Unattributed

  Yeah, we did. My partners, Peter and Ev, led it, and we were all extremely excited about it.

• bullish fact_claim Unattributed

  Instinct closes a billion-dollar Series C at 10 billion. Noah Shin, 23-year-old founder, amazing generational talent, raises a billion at 10 billion, takes on Muse and Alex Wang and Zuck.

• mixed criticism David Sacks

  The entry price matters. Instinct is like the new hot personal AI assistant. It corresponds with you by iMessage. And yeah, I think they just got a term sheet at $2.5 billion. They're in private beta right now. It is a new hotness. All the VCs are trying it, but still, that does seem kind of crazy.

• neutral fact_claim Unattributed

  Last week, I was at a board meeting for Owner, which just raised at $2.3 billion, right? It's sort of a next-ish generation AI-infused restaurant platform.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  We all have to be compound startups. We have no choice. Like, this is just the bar.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  The person who's going to win is going to be the person who compounds the most, grinds out the most software with these tools that have made them move incredibly quickly.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  Agents are exploding, to Rory's point. Instinct's exploding. I want some exposure to this space.

• bullish endorsement Unattributed

  I use it and love it, too. I think it's fantastic.

• bullish fact_claim Unattributed

  some of our offers are using it and love it and would pay for it. So I think there's a business here and definitely a big-ass trend here.

• bullish prediction Unattributed

  if instinct's going to do what we claim it does, in a year, it's got to do 100 times more than it does today. And that is still a moat today. Replit and Lovable of a year ago and Bolt were not a moat. Today, they have massive moats. And so I think it could easily happen with an instinct.

• mixed assessment Unattributed

  I understand what you're saying, but I disagree a little bit in the sense that the range of actions that you're going to allow a personal assistant to do is going to be much lower than the range of actions that these –

• neutral assessment Unattributed

  instinct is probably a better packaged, much more usable version of OpenClaw.

• neutral fact_claim Unattributed

  these companies, like instinct, have raised money at extraordinarily high prices for the stage of development they're at, like $2.5 billion

• neutral assessment Unattributed

  instinct is the most prominent example of that, focused on individual users, whereby if you give them access to your calendar and email, if you give them access to your credit card, they will figure out and, quote-unquote, manage your life and your daily tasks for you. And I've got to say it, some people, including some people in our shop, will love it.

• bearish assessment Unattributed

  I don't trust any instincts. I think this is a hopeless category today. Like, at the moment, it's not solvable.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  These instinct rounds make sense. Like if the good exits are all north of 25 billion, then at least I can make three acts on instinct, right?

• bearish assessment Unattributed

  the risk return profile was wildly attractive in April and increasingly unattractive fairly quickly by the time you come to September.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  the consumer product market fit for this product is so wild. I did an Instagram reel on it. I had over 1,000 DMs asking for invite codes.

• mixed assessment Unattributed

  the expected value of a number of those bets could be strongly positive. Admittedly, the variance is high.

• bearish criticism Unattributed

  don't take bets that 100% require an M&A outcome to be successful, right? They're just too, they're just too unpredictable.

• bullish endorsement Unattributed

  Noah Shin, the founder of Instinct, from every single person I've spoken to, they cite him as one of the most generational talents. ... you can see that being a very legitimate upside scenario case for 50 to 60 billion, as crazy as it sounds.

• bullish prediction Unattributed

  the same thing could happen here, which is that Instinct executes, build a huge user base, and an open AI steps up. ... It may well be that Instinct builds a lot of traction, doesn't have a cashflow positive IPO potential, but has a very attractive upside exit.

• mixed assessment Unattributed

  I recommend leading the round, but being cautious with reserves because the next round valuation may hit into realistic IPO limits.

• bullish endorsement Unattributed

  And let me tell you, this is one of the greatest teams I've seen in my history of investing. They're great. These kids come and they play World of Warcraft in real time during the pitch.

• bearish criticism Unattributed

  Harry already said instinct is slow. That's a sign. That's a sign of compute costs. That's why they have to raise a billion. And can they subsidize with venture capital $5 to $10 per user per month? Sure. But if they have to over monetize it, what if they become poolside? Like it's great. But literally I've got 10 million users at $10 a month. Now I've got a $1.2 billion nut a year to pay off. I'm struggling to raise the next round. I'm not Databricks.

• neutral assessment Unattributed

  However, after having done several reference calls and over a dozen synthetic ones on Claude, I've learned a couple of things. First of all, Meta cannot go cross platform. It cannot go in. It does own WhatsApp, which is a real threat. It won't be work with all carriers. It won't work across all services. It won't work across. It's highly focused on its own platforms. And so that is only a subset of how we communicate.

• bearish criticism Unattributed

  I would not recommend this investment because we can't compete with their balance. We can't compete with their servers. We can't compete with the GM. They can't compete with the LLM.

• mixed assessment Unattributed

  Do I think there's more that's going to happen? Yes. To me, the interesting question is, the second one is, do you think it's a standalone company that wins here? Or do you think it's going to be Facebook with Muse and open AI with whatever product they come up with? Do you think that the instincts of this world can build a standalone business here, giving that, to put it out there, having raised at something like 50 pre, less than five months ago, then 400 pre, then a couple of billion pre, the

• bearish criticism Unattributed

  There was a post today about this exact thing. Like, it helps you do, like, what are the things that people keep talking about it helps you do? It helps you sort your luxury items and shop around for high-end items. It helps you book your lavish vacations and it helps you get the best reservations at the hottest spots in town. Are those everyday consumer concerns or are those very, very rich person concerns?

• neutral assessment Unattributed

  Who was talking about Instinct first? Venture capitalists. Who got access first? Venture capitalists. The product was venture legible from the get-go because what does it do? It helps you untangle your snarled family life and solves your calendar and books your job. It's literally the Venture Capital toolkit.

• neutral assessment Unattributed

  I don't think anybody's worried about like getting money out of this right now.

• bearish assessment Unattributed

  at 10 billion, you have to be purchased for 20 billion at a minimum. That would then lead Apple's board, Microsoft, Satya Nadella. They would just say, well, wait a second. What can we build for that amount of money?

• bearish criticism Unattributed

  And if they're raising like three weeks after they raised before, you don't really get the retention data either on those 100,000, right? So I'd say that's an issue as well.

• bearish criticism Unattributed

  entry price matters, and this is now breaking entry price metrics

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  But I think Apple and Amazon are definitely, you know, they have to have an agent product. And they don't right now.

• bullish endorsement David Sacks

  Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft are all potential acquirers. And they definitely need the product.

• mixed assessment Unattributed

  I'm a skeptic on this one. I think there's real value on the table here, and it's just based on the monetization or potential of the acquirers.

• bearish assessment Unattributed

  In the case of Instinct, they don't have any revenue. They barely have any users. They're 100,000. And therefore, it's all about dreams, right?

• mixed assessment Unattributed

  This is a smart move by the founder to make hay while the sun shines. ... if instinct is at 10 billion now, and you have Muse in the market, then you're going to push the potential acquiring folks to say build or buy.

• neutral fact_claim Unattributed

  the founder came out and said that he just didn't want to charge people. So I guess that leaves advertising, you know, down the road.

• bearish criticism Unattributed

  they are burning so much cash on compute that they need to raise on this next round almost like a few weeks after closing the previous round, right? ... It's really surprising that they're leaving money on fire the way they do.

• bearish assessment Unattributed

  I think just the ability to reach eyeballs is pretty strong here. So I would be worried about the long term if I was going in at a $10 billion valuation.

• bearish fact_claim Unattributed

  Cursor had $2 or $3 billion and they got valued at $60. This has zero and is at $10.

• bearish prediction Unattributed

  If you're coming in at a $10 billion valuation, I mean, you think they're going to buy it?

• bearish assessment David Sacks

  So OpenAI doesn't need to buy this. Meta doesn't need to buy this. Grok doesn't need to buy this.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  I think this is different.

• bearish prediction Unattributed

  Clubhouse is a great analogy, right? They got to 1 billion in valuation, then 4 billion in valuation, and then Crickets, right?

• bearish prediction Unattributed

  If I'm them, I'm really worried about Muse.

• bearish assessment Unattributed

  if they think that by paying $2.5 billion, they can still make a return, we're going to wish them luck.

• bearish criticism Unattributed

  We have a couple of people who've used Instinct and the experience was just not great. And the feedback we got was that it had access to so much information. There was concern that they would actually sort of screw it up, right? So people stopped using it.

• bearish criticism Chamath Palihapitiya

  I think that data needs to get checked, yeah.

• neutral fact_claim Unattributed

  Benchmark Index Ventures, $2.5 billion. This is a fast ramp to the panel. Super fast ramp. And Sequoia Benchmark reportedly circling right now, and that they've raised roughly $350 million of the $1 billion.

• neutral fact_claim Unattributed

  Instinct went from founding to $2.5 billion valuation in under five months.

• neutral fact_claim Unattributed

  they now have 100,000 users.

• neutral fact_claim Unattributed

  Instinct is an AI assistant that works through your iMessage. They seeded it with the VC community and allegedly, according to reports, they're looking to raise a billion dollars at a $10 billion valuation.

• bearish criticism Unattributed

  If I know that Harry wants to know when this happens, I can do it at 100 to 1,000, the compute that Instinct probably uses today to solve that problem for you.

• neutral fact_claim Unattributed

  It's kind of silly for Instinct to wake up every six hours and go do a bunch of searching and a bunch of inference to figure out if you need to get pinged about the under 25 founder that popped up somewhere.

• bullish endorsement Unattributed

  I don't trust it, but for, you know, like I mentioned, organizing my eight-year-old's birthday party, calling up different places who can accommodate with, you know, these businesses are open between nine and five. I have other things to do between nine and five, Monday to Friday. I don't want to be on a phone call calling up who I called, what information I gave them, what was the next follow-up step, what's I need to fire up a court. Like all of those very annoying tasks can be now taken care

• bearish criticism Unattributed

  I haven't used them for any of cases where I would have to share any personal information like my credit card or SSN. I mean, there was an incident yesterday, somebody reported that, uh, you know, their agent shared their personal bank account information on a, on a company's group Slack, et cetera. So I don't trust it

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  I'm, I'm also really bullish on personal finance use cases because it's like the bane of my existence of like, got to aggregate all this stuff and then give it to an accountant or whatever it is. ... So I'm most bullish and excited about sort of personal finance use cases and, and just all the administrivia that we, that we deal with in our lives that, that hopefully we can agentify and not have to deal with, uh, insurers that deny things for, for stupid reasons when they really shouldn't.

• bearish criticism Unattributed

  I haven't used instinct, um, for the reasons I mentioned, mostly because I didn't want to give it access to, you know, all of the data.

• neutral assessment Unattributed

  You do wonder like so many business models are built on that little bit of friction, preventing people from doing it. So you do wonder what changes I do a lot in FinTech and I think a lot about finances and, you know, credit cards, they charge you more interest. If an agent can automatically move your debt from a credit card somewhere else, what happens? There's a bunch of things like that. Um, so I think that's another interesting thing is like, how do businesses change because when friction is

• bullish endorsement Unattributed

  I asked, thank you instinct for telling me that, that I'm eligible for a 600 euro, um, uh, refund because this is how the EU works. So I said, great. I don't, I don't want to fill any forms. Can you go and figure out how to get me this, this amazing refund? Cause my flight six hours late and it went ahead and did a bunch of stuff and chatted with an agent and tried to escalate to a real person and then did that and then asked for their manager. And it was, it was just phenomenal. ... I was very

• bearish criticism Unattributed

  coming in at a 10 billion price as an entry point. I would be worried about that.

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  I think the category can become really, really large, right? This could become the way that people interface with anything digital, right? ... So I do think the category can be very, very large. Um, I am not a consumer investor. And so coming in at a 10 billion kind of a price would be like just something I would not think of. So very early bets on trying out something very different, uh, approach.

• bearish assessment Unattributed

  I think either a more specialized model versus a general sort of personal assistant, I just think it's a it's very non trivial to overcome getting people to give you access to their most intimate information that is dangerous from a cyber threat type of standpoint.

• bearish assessment Unattributed

  I think paying that kind of valuation, even if you have a super slick product, that versus distribution and the ad networks and everything that the the huge platforms have, I think is it's a it's a big uphill battle from my standpoint.

• neutral assessment Unattributed

  I think Chris's point on, at the end of the day, it is the founder that they're backing, that it's very hard to argue because I have seen founders may have started somewhere and the story started to work and then they were ahead of anybody else in figuring out what the labs need next. ... So I think the right entrepreneur can still solve it.

• bearish criticism Unattributed

  I disagree with the sentiment about data will always be needed because, as we've seen, some of these larger model companies, they're good at taking this data and then at some point they don't need that data, right, because a model is just inherently able to solve those things. ... if the enterprises or this existing data is your currency, then you're going to, the terminal value seems not exist.

• mixed assessment Unattributed

  I think it's going to move from the labs to a broader set of end customers. ... the growth is explosive and it's very concentrated in a handful of labs today, but all of them have a thesis of how it will be applied to broader enterprise. ... I think there's going to be a lot of need for this across any large business. ... some of this will be enduring, but some of it will also come back down pretty dramatically, maybe as rapidly as it went up.

• neutral fact_claim Noah Shin

  it's always going to be free. They're just going to take a cut of transaction. So, if you buy book tickets for a plane ride trip on your Instinct agent, they'll take like 2% or 3% or something. And they said there were even boutique hotels that are offering them like a 30% cut if their agent makes a reservation.

• neutral fact_claim Unattributed

  And in some cases, like Instinct just raised pre-revenue at a $2.5 billion valuation, which is, you know, more equity value than Airtable just sold for after 13 years.

1. 2026-09-28 series_c · $1B · Led by Benchmark Capital
2. 2026-08 series_b · $250M · Led by Benchmark Capital

VentureSignalScore 83.4/100 for instinct, composed from 2 of 4 components (emerging formula), discounted ×0.85 for 50% signal coverage