$1 billion in new funding talks could lift San Francisco startup Instinct to a $10 billion valuation less than two years after launch.
The pitch rests on a bot that completes real-world errands by text or WhatsApp—chasing refunds, finding lost devices and making purchases after user approval—rather than just drafting text or summarizing documents.
That convenience depends on unusually broad access to emails, contacts, calendars, payment cards and sometimes third-party logins, raising privacy and control risks as some users have reported unauthorized restaurant charges.
Instinct raised $250 million at a $2.5 billion valuation in August, is still free by referral-only access, and now threatens to upstage larger rivals' personal-assistant tools while testing whether AI can disrupt established software markets.