Among text-based AI assistants, Instinct, Wajo, Town, Ollie and Meta’s Muse, which launched last week, stand out. San Francisco-based Instinct is attracting investor interest with a reported $10 billion valuation.
Instinct has made its Instinct Concierge feature, which can make phone calls on behalf of users, available in early access. The feature can make reservations at restaurants that do not accept online bookings, add users to dentists’ cancellation lists and resolve cable bill issues. The company plans to make the feature available to all users over time.
Meta’s Muse has also gained the ability to call U.S. businesses. The feature will first be offered to users who ask Muse to make calls. Meta said the new features would initially be made available to users who submit such requests. This largely closed the gap between competitors in terms of the ability to make calls.
Last week, Instinct provided email addresses so that assistants could take over opening and managing accounts. Users can also enable their assistants to communicate, for specific tasks, with the assistants of other people they have added to their trusted network.
Instinct raised $350 million last month, reaching a valuation of $2.5 billion; the company was reportedly in talks for a $1 billion investment and a $10 billion valuation. According to Sensor Tower, Muse was downloaded more than 730,000 times in the U.S. in its early days. The Meta AI app, meanwhile, had only 707,000 downloads in its first five days. At one point, Muse rose to No. 2 on the rankings.
Why it matters
These steps show that the competition among text-based assistants is shifting from merely generating responses to carrying out tasks on behalf of users. Businesses that can be reached by phone but do not offer online booking or a support channel are becoming direct targets for these tools. Areas such as account creation, account management, and communicating with other people’s assistants are creating a framework for assistants to take on users’ digital tasks more broadly. At the same time, it remains unclear under what user conditions these permissions will be activated and how early access and on-demand distribution will affect the extent of usage.
Background
Meta is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: over the past 90 days, we have published 19 articles mentioning the name; the most recent was dated September 19, 2026.