Briefs · Entrepreneurship
A 23-Year-Old Raised $250 Million for an Assistant You Cannot Download
A 23-year-old has raised $250 million for an assistant you cannot download, on a phone you cannot buy, with no revenue to show for it.
Instinct, founded by Noah Shinn — author of Reflexion, a widely cited 2023 paper on language agents — raised a $250 million Series B at a $2.5 billion valuation in late August, co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark. Total funding now stands at $350 million.
The product is invite-only and deliberately minimal: a personal AI assistant reached entirely by text message, with no app at all. The agent gets its own phone number and its own computer, and books travel, makes purchases, pays bills, cancels subscriptions and places phone calls. No user numbers, no growth figures, no revenue — and a valuation that was roughly $50 million four months earlier.
Conclusion: Instinct is not selling software, but rather belief — and belief, at $2.5 billion, is currently the hottest product in Silicon Valley.
Read the original at TechCrunch via ValueAdd VC
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