Consumer-focused AI assistant startup Instinct reportedly raising $250M

Instinct, an artificial intelligence assistant startup favored among Silicon Valley tech workers, is reportedly in the process of raising $250 million in funding. The company disclosed this information to the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, stating that the round is being co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark. Following this latest funding round, Instinct is expected to be valued at $2.5 billion.

The startup, officially known as Spear Street Technology Inc., was founded by Chief Executive Officer Noah Shinn, who previously worked at Sierra Inc., an AI startup led by former OpenAI Group board chair Bret Taylor.

Instinct launched its consumer-focused AI assistant in February, making it available through an invite-only private beta program. Users can integrate Instinct with applications like Gmail, allowing it to manage their calendars, send emails, and perform related tasks. Moreover, the assistant can automate complex, multi-step workflows.

However, the specific AI model powering the assistant remains undisclosed. It's speculated that Instinct may have utilized the $100 million it raised prior to this round to develop a custom neural network, likely by fine-tuning an existing open-source large language model. This customization is typically achieved by providing the model with additional training data.

Data collection policies of Instinct have attracted attention from some early adopters, as the company's terms of service allow it to train its AI models using user data. Shinn acknowledged these concerns and mentioned that his team is actively working to address users' cybersecurity issues. Instinct joins a growing list of popular AI agents that have emerged in the past two years, following the launch of Manus in March and OpenClaw, a desktop AI agent supporting multiple LLMs.

According to Shinn, acquiring access to Instinct's private beta program requires users to join a waitlist or receive an invitation from an existing customer, a strategy that Superhuman Inc. employed successfully when developing its email client. The company's waitlist at one point reached 180,000 users before being acquired by Grammarly Inc. last year.

The specific use of the raised capital by Instinct remains unclear, but the company's website suggests that additional computing infrastructure may be a focus.