Instinct founder said more than 50% of transactions on the platform are travel-related
TechCrunch Ivan Mehta
Instinct says over half its transactions are travel. That’s a big clue: booking is still AI’s best real-world use case.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, Ivan Mehta — read the original for the full story.
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Travel keeps showing up as the first thing people want AI to do, and Instinct is no exception. Noah Shinn said more than 50% of transactions on the invite-only platform are travel-related, from hotels to flights and the usual last-minute scramble.
He also said the company is approaching a billion dollars in annual transactions, though he didn’t explain exactly how that figure is calculated. On the podcast with investor Patrick O’Shaughnessy, Shinn framed the pitch as a better front end for the messy bits of travel booking: fewer tabs, fewer websites, less friction.
That argument is familiar, but the numbers suggest real momentum. Shinn said the platform is growing 10% day by day, with transaction volume rising at a similar pace. If that holds, Instinct is moving quickly from demo candy to something people are actually spending through.
The company is also trying to push beyond travel into reservations. Shinn argued that restaurant booking should be built around special occasions and that an agent could keep checking restaurant sites every five seconds for open slots. He even suggested Instinct wants to “reinvent reservations” and give users preferential treatment.
That idea is where the glamour runs into reality. Critics have already pointed out that agents could invent anniversaries to game the system, and that many restaurants like locals because they come back and spend again. Still, the bet is clear: if an AI can win the booking flow, it can start to own the transaction itself.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the part of AI that actually makes money: not grand speeches, just booking the thing and taking a cut. The rest of the industry loves to pretend the future is about reasoning; in practice, it’s often about who gets the cleaner checkout page. And yes, the fake-anniversary hack is exactly the kind of beige nonsense that grows around every closed system once the incentives get weird.
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