Q&A with Instinct founder Noah Shinn on Instinct's business model, personal agents, privacy, safety, security, securing compute, Big Tech competition, and more
Instinct’s public launch arc moved from an invite-only AI assistant for venture capitalists to a concierge offering and a confirmed $1 billion Series C at a $10 billion valuation. The interview arrives as the corpus has been tracking AI agents’ role in commerce, where an assistant’s value depends on acting across services rather than merely answering prompts.
Public reaction focused on trust: Patrick O’Shaughnessy said users who share sensitive payment information show stronger retention, while other posts highlighted travel as a significant share of reported transaction activity. That framing makes privacy, safety, security and compute central business-model questions, not peripheral product messaging.
First-order effects
Instinct’s funding and concierge product give Noah Shinn’s company more capacity to build a personal-agent service that must handle sensitive user preferences and, where users opt in, payment details.
Big Tech becomes the immediate competitive benchmark because Instinct is positioning its assistant around user trust, security and action-taking rather than a standalone chat interface.
Second-order effects
Travel merchants and other transaction-oriented services have an incentive to make their inventory and workflows legible to agents if Instinct’s concierge becomes a meaningful route to customers.
The emphasis on payment credentials raises the cost of weak privacy or security practices: retention may become tied to whether users trust an agent with progressively higher-stakes tasks.
Third-order effects
If consumer agents increasingly execute purchases across services, the durable advantage may shift toward platforms that combine integrations, permissions and trust rather than those that only supply model access.
Personal-agent competition would make security controls and reliable compute part of consumer distribution, as users judge assistants by whether they can safely complete work across third-party systems.
The trend: Consumer AI is moving toward personal agents that compete on trusted execution across services, with integrations and user permission becoming core platform infrastructure.
so many gems on consumer agent re-imagination of the internet as we know it here with @patrick_oshag - all underscoring the ROI on trust, the fact that the long-tail of user preferences are the ultimate moat in consumer AI, and many more.
The most insane part to me is that Instinct has ALREADY done $1B+ a year in transaction volume (50%+ is travel related) That is absolutely insane!! Of course the current user base is not representative of the average consumer > tech bubble takes 5-7 flights per year > average
40% of Instinct users give the agent a credit card within 3 weeks And once someone trusts it with something sensitive, they stay (retention hits ~80%) Noah on earning consumer trust and protecting user data: “It takes several weeks to build trust and I actually [video]
Good conversation, notes: - Approaching $1B in transaction volume; 50% is travel - After 3 weeks, 40% have shared a credit card - 80% retention rate for people who have shared a credit card - Focused on achieving higher-order objectives like establishing trust and having the
For a long time, I've been trying to describe to people how ai agents will transform business and technology but the conversation has been mostly theoretical. This interview with Noah Shinn about instinct finally puts the conversation into fact with a real product that does these…
My conversation with Noah Shinn (@noahrshinn), founder of Instinct. Noah is building a personal AI assistant. It's still invite only, has spent nothing on marketing, and is growing roughly 10% A DAY. This is his first long conversation about the company. We discuss: - Why Instinc…
A list of surprising and mind-boggling stats from this conversation: - $1B+ a year in transaction volume (still invite only) - Growing 10%+ A DAY and has spent zero dollars on marketing - 40% of users shared a personal credit card with Instinct within 3 weeks - Compute demand is …
@patrick_oshag and I had a great conversation a few days ago. We talked about: - Instinct's high-craft, user-centric, and minimalist approach to product-building. - Our exploding invite-only program that ensures that every new user is onboarded by a close friend or family member.…
.@noahrshinn founder of Instinct, on - building maximum trust from scratch - why users give instinct their credit cards - agents buying things - how launch actually happened - making things that people are inspired to share - the role of craft in the age of AI - boiling tech down…
Instinct raised $1B at a $10B valuation, from Benchmark, Sequoia, Coatue They have 14 employees. Most of the new money will go toward compute, which CEO Noah spends 40% of his time acquiring. They are growing 10% a day, had $1B of transaction volume, 50% of which is travel
Really impressed by Noah's thoughtfulness, humility, and overall vibe. I especially liked the bit about how he sweats the “visual shape” and scannability of agent messages. (Not surprised, it comes through in the product.) I still think Instinct has a nearly insurmountable
Personal assistant agents are magical but it's also quite painful when they miss. This weekend, I used Instinct to order bagels for my son's birthday. When I arrived to pick them up, the store hadn't received the order. It turns out my credit card failed (issue with agentic purch…
“My personal goal is to deliver this product for free to everyone for a lifetime.” Instinct is already on pace for about $1B a year in transaction volume, and 50% of it is travel. Noah on Instinct's business model and how he plans to keep it free: “When I see transaction [video]
Noah spends 40% of his time on compute It's fascinating to hear how he thinks about securing it when Instinct is growing 10% a day “What does it mean when the amount of compute that you need access to is now doubling effectively every week? Do we buy 2x of what we have right [vid…
This was an incredible conversation! Very impressed by @noahrshinn and what he and his team are building at Instinct. I just signed up—listen in and I think you might too.
Absolutely wild. “Instinct raised $1B at a $10B valuation, from Benchmark, Sequoia, Coatue They have 14 employees. Most of the new money will go toward compute, which CEO Noah spends 40% of his time acquiring.”
My personal favorite use case so far (favorite moment at the end) I wanted a new speaker system for my gym Took a picture of the gym and explained type of sound I wanted, budget, main use cases Instinct made me a website comparing 3-4 options, complet with mocked up visuals of
I have been enjoying Instinct. The zero-UI, zero-config setup is refreshing after time spent fiddling around in the depths of OpenClaw. 🦞😅 Don't get me wrong, OpenClaw is powerful if you're keen to hack away at it, but in the long run the user market for something like Instinct i…
Here's why we believe Instinct can become the defining personal agent company of this era. Search made finding things trivial. Mobile put it in your pocket. Instinct makes everyday tasks frictionless. Excited to partner with Noah Shinn (@noahrshinn) and the team building a person…
Instinct's $1B round at a $10B val now confirmed (from @sequoia, @benchmark, @coatuemgmt) Wildest valuation ramp of them all Pre-seed —> $10B val in ~5 months Shoutout @Trace_Cohen for deets on Instinct's early rounds And @andrewrsorkin for today's scoop!
Scoop in @dealbook : Instinct, the hot AI assistant, is now worth $10 billion! With only 14 employees. It raised $1 billion from @benchmark, @sequoia and @coatuemgmt. https://www.nytimes.com/...