Lobster-themed open-source startup OpenClaw created a viral trend for people to use AI agents to manage their lives. Now, Instinct is wowing VCs with a slicker AI helper service that has helped the San Francisco startup raise at a $2.5 billion valuation.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 Bloomberg Finance LP<\/p>\n
August normally marks the doldrums of fundraising for both startup founders and investors. But VCs have been so eager to back Instinct, a new AI agent startup that reads and answers text messages and emails and can do tasks like booking flights and restaurant reservations, that it raised at least two rounds over the last few months. <\/p>\n
Instinct\u2019s term and conditions state that its operated by a company Spear Street Technology that was registered in April by former Sierra researcher Noah Shinn, according to California corporate filings. The San Francisco-based startup\u2019s valuation has ballooned from $100 million to over $2.5 billion in just a matter of weeks. And the product isn\u2019t even public yet. You have to score an invite from VC insiders to download it. <\/p>\n
\u201cInstinct is a personal assistant that understands what you\u2019re working on and what’s important to you,\u201d reads the startup\u2019s bare-bones website. \u201cIt’s trained to use a phone and a computer. You can text or call it. It uses its devices in the same way that humans do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is OpenClaw for normal people,\u201d wrote investor Sheel Mohnot on X, referencing the open-source agent that went viral in January. Once given full control over your computer and accounts, OpenClaw promised to be able to run your life. Even though OpenAI hired its creator, interest in OpenClaw waned because it was tricky to set up and hard to run cheaply and securely for people without coding experience.<\/p>\n
Instinct operates a lot more like a consumer app. With one click, you can connect its AI to WhatsApp, Apple\u2019s iMessage or email accounts. But it doesn\u2019t just read and monitor messages and emails. It can also be tasked with executing tasks like making restaurant reservations or booking a flight. <\/p>\n
VCs have raved about Instinct\u2019s utility. \u201cHaving an AI product you trust to execute transactions on your behalf and navigate websites is amazing,\u201d wrote Midas List investor Sarah Guo earlier this month on X. \u201cIt gets it right, from Michelin restaurants to marathon entries, to camping ressies to general purchases (all executed well).\u201d<\/p>\n
Pranav Reddy, a partner at Guo\u2019s firm Conviction, led an early round into the company that valued it at $50 million, sources familiar with the deal told Forbes. Neil Mehta of Greenoaks was also an early backer of the company.<\/p>\n
Instinct and Greenoaks did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication. Conviction declined to comment. <\/p>\n
In early August, another Midas List investor, Mamoon Hamid of Kleiner Perkins, led a $75 million Series A round, valuing Instinct at over $500 million. Now Benchmark and Index Ventures are in talks to lead another new round of at least $200 million that would value the startup at over $2.5 billion, according to several sources familiar with the deal.<\/p>\n
Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark and Index Ventures did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.<\/p>\n
Instinct is currently free to use, but it could become a subscription service that could act as a \u2018chief of staff\u2019 for users, or it could serve up ads based on its access to emails, texts and financial records. <\/p>\n
That level of access to sensitive personal data has spurred concerns. Instinct\u2019s terms of use grant it \u201cperpetual and irrevocable\u201d to store user data, which could be used to train its AI models, TechCrunch reported<\/a> (Instinct didn\u2019t provide comment). AI founder Claire Vo posted that Instinct continued to access her Gmail and emails containing financial data after she had disconnected the AI agent from her Google account. \u201cSo I ask instinct. And it turns out, the email connector was off BUT the agent has been keeping copies of emails in my inbox in its own records!\u201d Vo wrote. Instinct didn\u2019t respond to a comment request. <\/p>\n Not everyone\u2019s experience of using the app seems to be as delightful as Guo\u2019s. Jason Yeh of Patron Fund wrote on X that when he asked Instinct to find open reservations for dinner, it went off script and booked a table with a punishing cancellation fee. \u201cHonestly kind of insane how anyone would give them keys to their accounts at large, and they better cover the $200 cancellation fee here,\u201d Yeh wrote.<\/p>\n After publication, Shinn said in a statement, \u201cThe fundraising is a reflection of early user excitement around the potential of proactive, always-on, extremely capable assistant that really feels like it has access to all your context and is always trying to help.\u201d<\/p>\n This story has been updated with additional comment and details from Instinct. <\/p>\n More from ForbesForbesBritish AI Chip Founder Becomes Europe\u2019s Youngest Self-Made BillionaireBy Alicia Park and Iain Martin<\/a>ForbesAI’s Latest Rocket Ship Is An Old School, 28-Year-Old Data CompanyBy Iain Martin<\/a>ForbesAI Startup Flapping Airplanes Is In Talks To Raise Funding At A $5 Billion ValuationBy Rashi Shrivastava, Iain Martin, and Team<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lobster-themed open-source startup OpenClaw created a viral trend for people to use AI agents to manage their lives.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,6128,247975,236403,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-750848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-instinct","tag-mamoon-hamid","tag-sarah-guo","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}