Instinct reportedly eyes $10B valuation as its new calling feature exposes security gaps

sanjaykalra · x · 2026-09-18

Instinct, the text-based AI assistant founded by a 23-year-old that raised $350M at $2.5B (now reportedly in talks for $1B at $10B), launched Instinct Concierge: outbound calling so the agent books restaurants without online reservations and argues billing disputes. Meta's Muse shipped the same capability nine days ago, hitting 730K US downloads in five days.

The enterprise red flags: Instinct runs on a persistent cloud machine with a browser and cached credentials — the same architecture that makes it feel magical is its entire risk surface. TechCrunch testers found undeletable email records, continued data access after disconnection, plaintext email storage, and verification codes pulled from inboxes without explicit permission.

Katie Jacobs Stanton notes trust matters more as agents grow powerful; Alex Cohen says it's not yet safe to give AI read/write inbox access; Claire Vo got an email summary at 2 PM after disconnecting at 11 AM. Author's read: terms allow Instinct to enter binding agreements on the user's behalf — a consumer agent with contractual authority on cached credentials fails enterprise security review on page one. That governance gap is where the next two years of enterprise AI work lives.

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Instinct reportedly eyes $10B valuation as its new calling feature exposes security gaps

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