Phone calls were supposed to be the thing Instinct couldn’t do. Rivals had been quietly using that gap as a selling point, positioning their agents as more capable for real-world tasks. That argument is now gone. According to TechCrunch, both Instinct and Meta’s Muse added outbound calling features on September 16, the same day, effectively wiping out one of the few remaining capability differences in a market that’s getting more crowded by the week.
Instinct’s version is called Instinct Concierge. Founder Noah Shinn announced it on X, describing it as a white glove service for high-touch tasks: booking restaurants that don’t take online reservations, getting you on a dentist’s cancellation list, dealing with cable company support queues. It’s currently in early access for a subset of users, with a broader rollout planned. The framing is deliberate. Concierge isn’t just about functionality, it’s about positioning Instinct as something closer to a personal assistant than a chatbot.
Meta’s Muse took a different rollout approach. The feature is expanding to users who specifically asked Muse to make calls, which Meta is using as a kind of organic prioritization system. Ryan Fox, associated with the Muse team, posted on X that phone calling was one of the top user requests. Meta has said this pattern will repeat for future Muse features too, with users who proactively ask about a capability getting access first. It’s a smart retention mechanic wrapped inside a product launch.
The competitive context here matters. Text-based AI agents are one of the hotter product categories right now. Instinct, Wajo, Town, Ollie, and Muse are all targeting the same user behavior: offloading tasks that currently require a person to sit down and deal with them. Calling has been a meaningful gap because a large portion of those tasks, especially anything involving older businesses or healthcare, still requires a phone. Whoever solves that friction credibly gets a real edge in daily utility.
Instinct has the investor attention to match its momentum. The San Francisco company raised $350 million at a $2.5 billion valuation last month and is reportedly in talks to raise $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation. That kind of trajectory puts pressure on every other player in the category, including Meta, which has far more distribution but is still trying to prove Muse has staying power beyond the initial download spike.
On that front, Muse is doing well. Analytics firm Sensor Tower reported that Muse outpaced the Meta AI app launch in its first five days, pulling over 730,000 U.S. downloads compared to Meta AI’s 707,000 at the same point post-launch. The app hit No. 2 in the top charts at one point. Still, download numbers are early signal, not proof of retention.
Instinct has also been moving on other fronts. Last week it rolled out dedicated email addresses so agents can handle account sign-ups and management. It also added a trusted network feature, letting one user’s assistant contact another user’s assistant to coordinate tasks. These aren’t flashy announcements, but they suggest Instinct is building toward an agent that fits into the full surface area of daily life, not just answering questions.
The calling feature parity is significant because it resets the comparison. Here’s what both platforms now offer in this space:
- Outbound calls to real businesses on behalf of the user
- Booking and reservation handling beyond standard online forms
- Support for tasks that require live conversation, not just web navigation
- Rollout tied to user interest or early access lists
What separates them now isn’t features, it’s execution quality and trust. Can the agent actually get through a phone tree? Can it handle edge cases without dropping the call or the context? Those are the questions that will determine which product users actually stick with once the novelty wears off.
