Rival AI agents, Instinct and Meta’s Muse, both add the ability to make calls

Disrupt 2026: OpenAI, Anthropic, Replit, and more take over 6 industry stages. 25% off tickets now Rival AI agents, Instinct and Meta’s Muse, both add the ability to make calls Ivan Mehta 6:46 AM PDT · September 17, 2026 Text-based AI assistants are a hot market, with Instinct, Wajo, Town, Ollie, and Meta’s Muse agent, which launched last week, vying for users’ attention and tasks. San Francisco-based Instinct is one of the most popular of the lot, attracting huge investor interest at what is reportedly a $10 billion valuation. Instinct’s popularity may now grow even further, as it’s added a new calling feature that lets your agent place calls and act as a concierge. Meta’s Muse, another serious contender in this battle, has also done the same. Instinct’s founder Noah Shinn announced on X that the buzzy startup’s new calling feature, Instinct Concierge, can do things like book restaurants that don’t take online reservations, get on your dentist’s cancellation list, or sort out problems with your cable bill. The feature is rolling out in early access to some users, with plans to expand to all users in time, he said. Your Instinct can now handle phone calls.Introducing Instinct Concierge – a white glove service meant to handle high-touch cases, such as making phone calls, high-end service booking, and more. You’ll be able to book the restaurant that doesn’t take online reservations, get on… pic.twitter.com/vGVnAJ1MF1 Though Instinct is shipping fast, Meta’s Muse AI assistant is keeping up. It also just gained the ability to place calls to U.S. businesses. The tech giant said the feature will first roll out to users who ask Muse to make a call. (This essentially serves as a feature request mechanism, and Meta said that whenever Muse launches new features, they’ll be available first to people who ask Muse about them.) These calling features arrive as a number of rivals had been touting their ability to make calls as an advantage over Instinct; but with Instinct’s Concierge feature rollout, they’re all now in parity with each other on this front. we just expanded the @Muse beta for outbound calls to US businesses, prioritizing folks who'd asked their Muse to let us know they wanted it first :)if you're in, give it a shot and tell us what you think. phone calling was one of our top requests and your feedback helped make… Last week, Instinct also rolled out email addresses to let Instinct handle account sign-up and management. The company additionally now allows its users’ assistants to contact other people’s assistants for managing certain tasks, by adding those users to a trusted network. Both Instinct and Muse have seen great traction over the last few weeks. Instinct raised $350 million at a $2.5 billion valuation last month, and it is reportedly in talks to raise $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation, with investors showing heavy interest in text-based assistants that can navigate different surfaces for users. Analytics firm Sensor Tower noted that Muse outgrew the Meta AI app launch in the first few days. The app garnered over 730,000 downloads in the U.S., compared to the Meta AI app, which was downloaded 707,000 times post-launch in the first five days. The app even reached the number 2 position in the top charts at one point. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Ivan Mehta Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web. You can contact or verify outreach from Ivan by emailing im@ivanmehta.com or via encrypted message at ivan.42 on Signal. October 13 – 15 San Francisco Last day to book an exhibit table is September 18. Don’t miss out on high-impact leads, investor access, and a brand spotlight in Disrupt’s Expo Hall. Clean tech startup Fluxnium found a way to tap 50,000 years’ worth of nuclear fuel Tim De Chant Jensen Huang took a call from Trump, and showed off something else, too Connie Loizos The 9 buzziest startups from Y Combinator’s latest Demo Day, according to VCs Marina Temkin Dominic-Madori Davis Tesla says it will finally unveil the second-generation Roadster on October 1 Anthony Ha Revolut confirms customer data breach through fake government requests Jagmeet Singh Matt Mullenweg tells (trolls?) Automattic staff, saying he’s back in control after CEO ouster Sarah Perez OpenAI puts Pro subscriptions on hold due to Astra demand Sarah Perez

---

Source: TechCrunch

This article has been carefully curated and reformatted for educational and informational purposes. Full credit goes to the original publisher.

---

📚 Visit more helpful articles on Joab Peters Blog