Instinct founder Noah Shinn said that more than 50% of transactions on the platform are travel-related and that the invite-only platform is approaching $1 billion in annual transaction volume. In an interview with investor Patrick O’Shaughnessy, Shinn said Instinct allows users to book flights, hotels and other services through a single interface.
Shinn said the company is growing 10% daily and that its transaction volume is increasing at a similar rate. He also said they want to redesign restaurant reservations. In his view, an AI agent could check restaurant websites every five seconds and notify users when reservations become available. Shinn also argued that restaurants may want to prioritize customers making reservations for special occasions.
Some observers pointed out that users might lie about anniversaries or special occasions in order to book a table. It was also noted that some restaurants prefer local customers because they are regulars.
On Monday, Instinct received a $1 billion Series C investment from Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital and Coatue. The round raised the company’s valuation to $10 billion. The 14-person startup is competing in the personal AI agent space with Meta’s Muse and Khosla-backed Wajo.
The source text states that the article was published on September 29, 2026, and that Shinn’s remarks were made on a recent podcast.
Why it matters
Instinct’s current use being concentrated in travel shows that the platform is first testing its claim as a personal AI agent through the practical benefits it offers in the reservation process. Its move into the restaurant space raises not only a technical access issue but also questions of fairness and verification over which users should be offered limited availability. How users’ claims will be assessed in a system where information about special occasions provides an advantage, and how the priority given to regular and local customers will be preserved, are among the main outstanding issues. The investment it has received and the presence of competitors show that this approach is being treated not merely as a small-scale experiment but as part of the competition among personal AI services. However, the company’s invite-only, 14-person structure leaves open the question of how this scale will be managed.
Background
Instinct is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 4 articles mentioning the name in the past 90 days; the latest is dated September 29, 2026.