Instinct raises $1B amid AI agent wars
“The agent wars aren't going to be won by whoever raises the most money.”
Transcript
The AI agent instinct just raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation. And a month ago, it was valued at $2.5 billion, and it's still invite only. And his founder Noah Shen is 23 years old, and first of all, respect. At 23, I didn't know my left from my right, and this kid built a $10 billion
company already. But I think Silicon Valley might be making a massive mistake, because you cannot buy your way into winning the Agent Wars. This reminds me of the early Neo-Bank era, raised hundreds of millions of dollars, subsidized the product, acquire as many users as possible, and assume whoever gets the most distribution wins.
But AI is different. Because instinct is trying to become the universal personal agent. Travel, reservations, purchases, bills, research, phone calls, everything. Meanwhile, medic and term use-on for billions of people already inside its ecosystem.
Amazon could build an agent around shopping. X already has grok. And there will soon be specialized agents built specifically for healthcare travel, finance, childcare, and every vertical imaginable. In an infinite world of AI, specificity becomes the moat.
Because Instinct's biggest challenge isn't getting someone to try it. It's getting someone to need it. A universal agent like Instinct creates curiosity. A specialized agent solves pain. And there's another constraint nobody is talking about enough. Your text messages are precious.
Email took decades to become filled with marketing slop, and push notifications soon followed. If every AI company decides it wants to live inside your text, consumers are going to shut down incredibly fast. There might be room for one personal agent, maybe two. So I personally don't think the winning strategy is
raise more money and boil the ocean. Money is a commodity. You need an incredible product. You need distribution. You need a fantastic team. But most importantly, you need a reason to exist that somebody else can't easily replicate. The agent wars aren't going to be won by whoever raises the most money.
They're going to be won by whoever figures out exactly what they should own. Every industry, every business model, there's a larger opportunity hiding inside of it. I'm here to help you find them. Follow me for more tech and AI news.