Instinct, a startup founded last year and led by 23-year-old Noah Shinn, has reached a major financing milestone over the summer amid strong investor interest in artificial intelligence.
The company, which offers its product under the corporate name Spear Street Technology, told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that it raised $250 million in a recent Series B funding round. That infusion brings the startup’s total funding to $350 million and assigns a $2.5 billion valuation. According to the Journal, the round was co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark.
Instinct provides an agent-style AI assistant designed to organize users’ lives efficiently by connecting to their apps and devices and accepting instructions via texts and calls. The startup says early users have embraced the assistant; in a Wednesday tweet Noah Shinn noted customers have used Instinct to plan cross-country road trips, handle weekly groceries and concert tickets, cancel hundreds of dollars in subscriptions, and even organize a wedding.
The product is currently in private beta and is presented on an intentionally lo-fi website. It has also sparked controversy: online users have raised privacy concerns about the broad permissions the app requests and about terms of use that some find potentially invasive.
The case illustrates how a company founded last year with a young CEO can quickly build a multibillion-dollar valuation during the AI boom, while also confronting questions about data access and user protections.
