Profile: Instinct's 23-year-old founder Noah Shinn now reportedly seeking $10B valuation
Business Insider traces how Reflexion co-author Noah Shinn built Instinct into a rival to Meta's Muse, now fundraising at a reported $10 billion valuation.
What to know
- Noah Shinn, 23, co-authored the influential 2023 Reflexion paper on AI agents as a Northeastern undergrad before dropping out.
- His startup Instinct went viral among Silicon Valley insiders this summer and raised $250 million at a $2.5 billion valuation.
- Instinct is now reportedly fundraising at a $10 billion valuation and is soft-launched as an invite-only site for VCs, putting it in direct competition with Meta's Muse.
- Journalist Charles Rollet notes Shinn didn't drop out to start a company but to join Sierra as one of its first employees, complicating the 'college dropout' narrative.
“immense drive and independence, capable of identifying and executing on research questions on his own with little supervision”
Steven Holtzen, Northeastern computer science professor · Business Insider ↗ · Sep 21
Noah Shinn Founder, InstinctAshwin Gopinath MIT professor, Reflexion co-authorArjun Guha Northeastern computer science professorSteven Holtzen Northeastern computer science professor
Mark Zuckerberg Meta CEO
How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlesposts
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Instinct reportedly fundraising at a $10 billion valuation
Techmeme and Business Insider report Instinct has soft-launched as an invite-only site for VCs and is reportedly in talks to raise at a $10 billion valuation, a fourfold jump from its earlier $2.5 billion mark.
“NEW: Noah Shinn, the 23-year-old founder of Instinct, is often described as a college dropout. But there's way more to the story. He was a star AI researcher, publishing a hugely influential paper on AI agents. He only dropped out to become one of Sierra's first employees.”
— @charlesrollet1, Journalist, Business Insider · source -
1 outlet first by Business Insider, 22h ago · read ↗
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Instinct's breakout has turned a college dropout into one of AI's hottest young founders and put his tiny startup in direct competition with another company started by a college dropout: Meta. Noah Shinn's invite-only AI assistant seemingly came out of nowhere this summer, went viral among Silicon...
1 more of the top 2 · 2 posts in this stretch
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NEW: Noah Shinn, the 23-year-old founder of Instinct, is often described as a college dropout. But there's way more to the story. He was a star AI researcher, publishing a hugely influential paper on AI agents. He only dropped out to become one of Sierra's first employees.
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Business Insider profiles Shinn's rise from researcher to founder
The outlet detailed Shinn's academic background, his professors' recollections of his research drive, and how Instinct's growth reflects a shift toward AI agents that complete tasks rather than just chat.
“Virtually zero students can write research papers as undergrads. Even fewer can do it without any assistance…”
— Arjun Guha -
background
Instinct launches invite-only and goes viral — Shinn's AI assistant Instinct emerged this summer, spread virally among Silicon Valley insiders, and raised $250 million at a $2.5 billion valuation, positioning it against Meta's Muse.
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Shinn co-authors the Reflexion paper on AI agents — Over three months, Gopinath, Shinn and four others wrote a paper introducing Reflexion, a technique letting AI agents learn from past failures, later presented at NeurIPS.
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Shinn drops out of Northeastern to join Sierra — Rather than leaving college to found a startup immediately, Shinn dropped out to become one of the first employees at Sierra, a detail a reporter says complicates the standard 'college dropout' story.
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Shinn joins MIT professor's holiday AI research project — Weeks after ChatGPT's November 2022 launch, then-undergraduate Noah Shinn answered MIT professor Ashwin Gopinath's LinkedIn call for students to experiment with the new technology over the holidays.