The $10B AI Assistant Challenging Meta's Muse, Grok's Bots, and OpenAI's Dots
Sep 28, 2026 · 1:25:27
Patrick O'Shaughnessy interviews Noah Shinn, CEO of Instinct, whose app-less AI personal assistant—used via text, voice, calls, and email—is growing 10% day over day on invites alone with zero marketing spend. Shinn says it already transacts over $1 billion a year on a small user base, 50% of it travel, and that 40% of users share a credit card within three weeks, driving 80% retention. He argues agents will rewrite the internet's business model: no ads, but a merchant-funded transaction take rate like Apple Pay, with proactive behavior raising volume for businesses like Uber rather than shrinking them. He covers compute needs doubling weekly with long lead times, security firewalls and watchdog systems, the Instinct-to-Instinct trusted scheduling network, and a ~$1 billion raise at a ~$10 billion valuation.
