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Headlines · 10
- Salesforce's AIforce hands the CRM entry point to Claude and Slack
An analysis by Zhixun Zhiku published via TMTPost says Salesforce unveiled AIforce at Dreamforce on September 15, 2026, letting employees call Salesforce data, permissions and business processes from interfaces such as Claude and Slack, alongside Claudeforce, Slackforce, Agentforce Coworker and the Headless 360 interface for other agents. Citing Salesforce results, it says Agentforce ARR topped $1.5 billion in fiscal 2027 Q2, up more than 240% year over year, yet still only about 3.3% of the quarter's $11.345 billion in revenue on an annualized basis. The author argues Salesforce is shifting from seat subscriptions toward conversation and Flex Credits workload pricing and, in some products, outcome-based fees, with its moat now resting on customer understanding, AI delivery costs and reliable long-term execution.
钛媒体 · 🔥 10 - AI agents flood the internet as platforms enter 'no man's land'
A commentary published by Huxiu's Token Moment argues that as personal AI assistants such as Muse, Instinct, Grok Bot, WeChat Xiaowei and Cue proliferate, users are handing search, browsing, price comparison, ordering and payment to AI agents — while Amazon moved to block Muse's access and Apple tightened system permissions for AI agents, exposing a conflict between platforms and agents. The piece cites Cloudflare data putting AI traffic at 57.5% versus 42.5% for humans, a16z figures saying agent token consumption runs about 5x human usage and grew 14x in six months, and Alipay saying AI payment transactions passed 300 million. The author concludes the internet's next phase shifts from competing for human attention to competing for AI agent entry points, requiring platforms to serve both human-facing front ends and agent-callable back ends.
虎嗅 AI · 🔥 4 - Instinct raises $1B at $10B valuation for its no-app personal agent
According to a founder interview reported by Huxiu AI, Instinct — a one-year-old company with 14 employees — has raised a new $1B round led by Sequoia Capital, Benchmark and Coatue, lifting its valuation to $10B from $25B a month earlier. The product has no standalone app: users text, call and email it to book flights, cancel subscriptions and plan gatherings, and founder Noah Shinn says annualized transaction volume is already around $1B, about half of it travel. He says growth reached roughly 10% a day with no marketing budget, that compute is the main bottleneck, that about 40% of users link a credit card after roughly three weeks, and that Instinct plans to earn merchant transaction fees rather than ad revenue.
虎嗅 AI · 🔥 0 - 23-year-old's 14-person AI agent startup Instinct hits $10B valuation
Citing Reuters, 36Kr reports that Instinct, the personal AI assistant startup founded by 23-year-old Noah Shinn, announced a $1 billion funding round on September 28 with investors including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark and Coatue, at a reported valuation of about $10 billion — roughly 4x its $25 billion... valuation of $2.5 billion in late August — with a team of just 14 people. Rather than a standalone app, users reach the assistant by text or phone call to book flights, buy household goods, cancel subscriptions or contact merchants, and a group-chat agent feature has been opened to some users. Shinn has said annualized transaction volume on the platform is approaching $1 billion, more than half travel-related, though he did not explain the calculation and the figure is self-reported. The Instinct Selections recommendation feature launched in late September drew complaints after suggesting products such as luggage without a shopping request, leaving monetization, privacy and reliability still unproven.
36氪 人工智能 · 🔥 0 - Sierra publishes draft Personal Agent Protocol 'Poppy' with 35 more partners
After first announcing the Personal Agent Protocol with Meta, Genesys, Instinct, NiCE, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe and Walmart, Sierra has now published a draft of the protocol, codenamed Poppy, along with 35 additional design partners including OpenAI, Mastercard, Visa, Bank of America, Target, Notion and Cloudflare. The draft defines five building blocks — discovery, sessions, sign-in, one session across every channel, and getting the job done — and is built on existing standards such as OAuth, JSON Web Tokens, HTTPS, OpenAPI and MCP, so companies can connect once rather than building a separate link for each personal agent. Sierra also says that at Sierra Summit, Rocket VP of Product Alex McGillis demonstrated the protocol live using Meta's personal agent Muse to complete a mortgage pre-approval with Rocket's own agent, a demo the company describes itself.
Sierra Blog · 🔥 0 - AI startup M&A hits 195 deals this year, OpenAI the most active buyer
Per Crunchbase data, VC-backed AI companies had made 195 acquisitions of AI startups as of Sept 29, 14% more than all of 2025, though only 12 of the deals disclosed a price. OpenAI is the most active buyer of the past three years with 20 AI-related acquisitions, 10 of them this year, followed by Anthropic and legal-AI startup Legora with five each. The largest disclosed deal was Nscale's $1.65B purchase of Anyscale, ahead of Cyera's $1B deal for Oasis Security and Anthropic's $400M acquisition of Coefficient Bio.
智东西 · 🔥 0 - Sierra launches fleming-1 to detect when an AI agent is calling
Sierra released fleming-1, a model that analyzes a caller's speech in real time and scores the audio for signs it was generated by AI, flagging calls likely made by an agent. Sierra says the model is tuned to be conservative by default so real people are not inadvertently flagged, and that it provides information rather than judgment: businesses decide whether to add verification steps or simply measure how often agent calls occur. The model works with any voice agent built on Sierra and can be switched on. Sierra also said it announced Personal Agent Protocol, an open standard for personal agents to work with businesses in an authorized way, and noted its own agents began calling each other in healthcare last year.
Sierra Blog · 🔥 0 - Instinct, a 14-person agent startup with no app, raises $1B at ~$10B valuation
On Sept. 28, personal-agent startup Instinct announced a $1B Series C co-led by Sequoia, Benchmark and Coatue, lifting its valuation from $2.5B to roughly $10B in about a month. The company has 14 employees, no revenue and no phone app: users reach the agent only by text, phone and email, and it earns commissions on bookings such as hotels, flight changes and price comparisons. The founder says about 40% of users link a credit card after roughly three weeks and about 80% of those who link a sensitive asset stay, though none of the figures are independently audited.
36氪 人工智能 · 🔥 0 - Meta, Sierra and partners launch Personal Agent Protocol for AI agent commerce
Enterprise AI startup Sierra said on Oct. 6 that it is developing the Personal Agent Protocol (PAP) with Meta and companies including Walmart, Shopify and Stripe — an open standard governing how user-authorized personal AI agents access businesses' websites, APIs and services. Sierra co-founder Bret Taylor said the protocol is designed to handle authentication, empower consumers and give companies visibility into what personal agents do through their sites, APIs or company agents, and that it is open for anyone to implement; Meta's David Singleton compared it to email as a universal standard. The move follows Amazon blocking Meta's Muse agent from its retail site and reports of agents hitting anti-bot blocks on other retail sites, where users often cannot tell whether a block is intentional or accidental.
CNBC Technology · 🔥 0 - 14-person Instinct raises $1B at $10B valuation as AI assistant race heats up
San Francisco AI assistant startup Instinct announced a $1B Series C at a $10B valuation in late September with only 14 employees and no standalone app; users reach it by text, phone call, email, WhatsApp or iMessage. Founder Noah Shinn said on a podcast that platform transaction volume is near or above $1B a year, roughly half from travel — a figure with no audit, third-party data or disclosed methodology. The piece also surveys the personal agent race around Meta Muse (launched Sept 8) and OpenAI Dots (announced at DevDay on Sept 29), plus mishandled orders, broad authorization terms and trust concerns.
虎嗅 AI · 🔥 0
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