AI agent startup Instinct has raised $1 billion in a Series C round valuing the company at $10 billion — quadrupling its valuation from $2.5 billion just a month earlier.

The round drew investments from Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital and Coatue, and was first reported by The Information. It ranks among the largest private funding rounds of the year.

Founded in 2025 by Noah Shinn, formerly of Bret Taylor’s AI customer-service startup Sierra, Instinct builds a personal AI agent that performs day-to-day tasks autonomously via text or calls. Users can ask it to plan trips, buy groceries, book tickets or cancel subscriptions, and a new concierge offering calls businesses on users’ behalf.

The company says privacy features include isolated sandboxes and short-lived local credentials, plus a new active-detection system to catch subtle hallucinations in agent responses.

Mega-rounds have become a defining feature of the AI boom, funding enormous computing costs. But with $1 billion in fresh capital and a $10 billion price tag, expectations for breakthrough products will be higher than ever.