Three fast-growing startups tied to artificial intelligence have set or been offered sharply higher valuations since late September, even as public-market investors worry about how much Big Tech is spending on AI. Instinct, which sells a personal AI agent, announced a $1 billion round at a $10 billion valuation on September 28, about a month after it was valued at $2.5 billion. Ramp, a corporate card and spend-management company, raised $1.85 billion at a $60 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg and later coverage in October. Cognition, the maker of the coding agent Devin, is weighing offers that would value it at $70 billion to $80 billion, Business Insider reported, according to The Next Web.

Instinct: $2.5 billion to $10 billion in about a month

Instinct said on September 28 that it had raised a $1 billion Series C from Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital and Coatue at a $10 billion valuation, according to the Brazilian outlet Startups and the British site Verdict. The company’s previous round, a $250 million Series B announced on August 26 and co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark, valued it at $2.5 billion. Startups counts 33 days between the two announcements, although its own subtitle says 30. It puts the company’s total funding at $1.35 billion.

Instinct is led by Noah Shinn, who is 23, and is operated by a company called Spear Street Technology, Startups and OfficeChai report. OfficeChai says Shinn was one of the earliest employees at the AI customer-service company Sierra, and it counts 14 employees at Instinct. The service has been open by invitation since August and talks to users by text message and phone calls, according to Startups. Verdict says the company describes an agent that can finish errands on its own phone and computer. Errands named in the coverage include trip planning, grocery orders and canceling unused subscriptions.

Usage figures differ between reports. OfficeChai says the service has more than 100,000 users, is free, and has a business model that is still unresolved. Startups says the company has not disclosed user numbers or growth metrics. Verdict reports that the new money is meant to widen access to an agent that is still in early access.

Competition is arriving. Startups and OfficeChai both note that Meta has launched its own assistant, called Muse; OfficeChai dates the launch to September 8. OfficeChai also reports that privacy researchers have questioned how much access the agent has to users’ accounts, and that TechCrunch reported security and privacy concerns in August. It describes one user’s report that the agent described a financial document that was not theirs, and says Shinn replied that no user data was shared and that the model had fabricated the details.

Ramp: $60 billion on more than $2 billion of revenue

Bloomberg first reported the Ramp round on October 9, according to The Next Web, citing people familiar with the matter. Bloomberg said Dragoneer Investment Group and Thrive Capital led the raise of about $1.85 billion, with Founders Fund also investing, and that the $60 billion figure is a pre-money valuation, meaning it excludes the new capital. Ramp declined to comment to Bloomberg. Lens analysis: if the figure is pre-money, adding the new money gives about $61.85 billion after the round, although neither source states a post-money number.

Startups covered the completed round on October 15. It names Dragoneer, Thrive, Founders Fund, Sands Capital and Avenir Growth as co-leads, with participation from Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, GIC, Coatue, Lightspeed, Khosla Ventures and the Ontario Teachers’ pension plan. The valuation is 36% above the $44 billion set by a $750 million round about four months earlier, Startups says, and Bloomberg’s account places that earlier round in June. Startups puts Ramp’s total funding at about $5 billion.

Startups reports that Ramp’s annualized revenue has passed $2 billion, up from $1.5 billion in June, that annualized purchase volume on the platform reached $275 billion, up 175% from a year earlier, and that customers rose to 85,000 from 70,000 in June. Bloomberg’s June figures, as relayed by The Next Web, were revenue above $1.5 billion and 70,000 businesses, up from 50,000 at the start of the year. The two accounts therefore agree on the starting point.

According to Startups, Ramp has moved from expense cards into procurement, supplier management, fraud detection and accounting, and has built AI agents into those products. It also reports that Ramp introduced a corporate card meant for AI agents to use and that in August it launched a tool that tracks and controls customers’ spending on AI model usage. Lens analysis: dividing a $60 billion valuation by $2 billion of annualized revenue gives about 30 times revenue, a multiple that depends on growth continuing.

Cognition: offers above $70 billion, but no deal

Business Insider reported on Wednesday that investors have made offers valuing Cognition at $70 billion to $80 billion and that the company is seriously considering raising a new round before the end of the year, according to The Next Web’s account, published October 30. TNW wrote that the talks are at an early stage and the terms could change, that the report relies on unnamed sources, and that TNW had not verified it independently. Lens could not open the Business Insider article and relies on TNW’s description, so the figures should be read as reported talks and not as a completed financing.

The last completed round was announced on September 8: a Series E of more than $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel, with Founders Fund, General Catalyst and Avenir also investing, TNW and the Dutch outlet Techzine report. Techzine says the valuation was nearly double the $26 billion of a May round. TNW says Cognition reported that its annualized run-rate revenue grew from $492 million in May to nearly $900 million. By TNW’s arithmetic, an $80 billion valuation would be about two-thirds above the September price.

Cognition was founded in 2023 by Scott Wu, Steven Hao and Walden Yan, TNW says, and builds Devin, an agent that writes code. Techzine lists Nvidia, GE Aerospace, Citi and Mercedes-Benz among Devin’s users. TNW also notes that SpaceX finalized a $60 billion takeover of Cursor, one of Cognition’s main rivals, in June. Lens did not find a second source for that figure.

Smaller deals: Wabi, Otter and Upwind

Wabi, an app that builds small apps from text prompts and now describes itself as a personal agent, announced on October 29 that it raised $55 million at a $1.25 billion valuation, TechCrunch reports. IVP led the round, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Forerunner and the Amazon Alexa Fund. Wabi was founded by Eugenia Kuyda, who also founded the AI companion app Replika. TechCrunch says Wabi turned toward an AI messenger in September, and it cites Instinct’s $10 billion round as market context.

Not every large deal carries a valuation. Otter.ai, the meeting-transcription company, announced $320 million in growth financing on October 20 from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund, according to The Next Web. TNW did not disclose a valuation and did not say whether the money is equity or another form of financing. Otter says its service is used by more than 40 million people.

Upwind, an Israeli cloud-security company, shows how contested the numbers can be. AI Weekly, summarizing a report from The Information, said Datadog offered close to $4 billion for the company and that Upwind chose to raise money instead; its summary describes a round of about $300 million at roughly a $3.8 billion valuation. The Israeli outlet CTech wrote on October 22 that it had learned the reported offer was not made. CTech also reported, citing The Information, that Upwind’s annual recurring revenue exceeded $50 million, up from about $20 million at the end of 2025.

What the public markets are saying

The rounds arrived in the same weeks that investors turned more cautious about AI spending. TechCrunch reported on October 30 that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft have outlined more than $740 billion of capital spending this year, that Alphabet fell 12% on Thursday in its worst day on record, and that the Nasdaq fell 2.9% on Friday. It also reported that Alphabet’s free cash flow was negative $9.1 billion in the third quarter, and that five large companies raised a combined $326 billion in debt in 2026, roughly triple the total of last year, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

TechCrunch did not discuss startup valuations directly, and none of the reports above links a private round to those market moves. Lens analysis: private valuations are set in negotiated deals, often months before they are announced, and they can lag public sentiment. The rounds also rest on company-reported growth, such as Ramp’s revenue and Cognition’s run rate, which outsiders cannot check. TechCrunch adds that Anthropic filed for an initial public offering this week, which would put another large AI company’s finances in front of public investors.

What to watch

The first test is whether Cognition’s talks turn into a signed round and at what price, since the reported range spans $10 billion. The second is whether Instinct can show a business model, given that OfficeChai describes the service as free and Startups notes that rivals such as Meta are entering the market. A third is how Ramp’s revenue holds as its valuation is measured against it. Public-market volatility in the coming weeks may show whether investors in later rounds keep paying the same multiples.

Sources

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