Instinct Raises $1 Billion at $10 Billion, 5 Weeks After a $2.5 Billion Mark

Instinct, a consumer AI agent with 14 employees, raised a $1 billion Series C at a $10 billion valuation in the week ending Oct. 2, according to Crunchbase News. Sequoia Capital, Benchmark and Coatue led. The product is free, and no business model has been announced.

Crunchbase ranked it the largest round of the week, ahead of EliseAI's $350 million. The valuation comes five weeks after a Series B at $2.5 billion, which OfficeChai dates to Aug. 26.

Four valuations in about six months

OfficeChai's account of the company's history puts it at roughly $50 million in the spring, about $500 million at a Series A in early August, $2.5 billion at the Series B on Aug. 26, and $10 billion now. That is 200 times the spring figure and four times the Series B mark. Total funding is above $1.3 billion, per OfficeChai.

Stage	Valuation	Investors named by OfficeChai
Early round, spring 2026	About $50 million	Conviction, Greenoaks
Series A, early August	About $500 million	Kleiner Perkins
Series B, Aug. 26	$2.5 billion	Index Ventures, Benchmark
Series C, week of Oct. 2	$10 billion	Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, Coatue

1. Spring early round50 $M
2. Series A500 $M
3. Series B2500 $M
4. Series C10K $M

Source: OfficeChai, accessed 2026-10-07; Series C from Crunchbase News, Oct. 2, 2026

Benchmark appears in both the Series B and Series C lists, so at least one investor priced the company twice within weeks.

What $10 billion is paying for

OfficeChai reports more than 100,000 users on an invite-only product. At $10 billion that is $100,000 of valuation per user, and $714 million per employee. Neither figure is a measure of anything the company has sold, because Instinct charges nothing.

The product texts or calls on a user's behalf to book, buy and cancel: trip planning, grocery orders, tickets, bill negotiation, subscription cancellation. It connects to email, calendar and messaging apps. OfficeChai says it runs on open-weight models, which means the company's cost of serving each user rises with usage while it earns nothing from that use.

Founder and chief executive Noah Shinn, 23, is first author of the "Reflexion" paper on agent self-improvement and previously worked as a research scientist at Sierra, per OfficeChai. Shinn said the money is for "building the best personal agent for the deeply personal nuances of everyday life."

What is not known

The $1 billion would be about 10% of the company if $10 billion is the post-money figure. Neither Crunchbase nor OfficeChai states whether it is, nor whether the round is closed in full or tranched. Neither gives a revenue figure, because there is none to give.

OfficeChai lists trust and privacy as open questions, plus compute costs and competition from Meta's Muse and OpenAI's assistant. The same category of product has drawn investors before: Ghost raised $11 million for a $3,499 personal AI computer, and EliseAI's $350 million round sits in the same week's ranking at 40% of Instinct's valuation.

The next observable event is a price. Once Instinct charges for anything, the valuation can be set against revenue for the first time.