Instinct Reaches $10B Valuation With 14 Employees in First Year

AI agent startup Instinct processes more than $1 billion in annualized transaction volume and grows its user base by 10% daily with zero marketing spend. The company manages this scale with only 14 employees, and about 50% of its processed transactions are for travel. Approximately 40% of users provide the agent with a personal credit card within three weeks, and those who share sensitive data exhibit an 80% retention rate. The company is less than a year old and recently raised $1 billion in a Series C round from Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital, and Coatue at a $10 billion valuation. This funding follows a $250 million raise at a $2.5 billion valuation just one month prior. Most of the new capital will support compute capacity, which doubles in demand every week and currently consumes 40% of CEO Noah Shinn's time to acquire.