Instinct took Silicon Valley by storm. Meet the 'brilliant' 23-year-old college dropout who started it.

Rebecca Zisser/BI Noah Shinn was publishing influential AI research before he graduated from college.

Now, at the ripe age of 23, he's taking on Mark Zuckerberg .

Shinn's invite-only AI assistant, Instinct, seemingly came out of nowhere this summer, went viral among Silicon Valley insiders, and raised $250 million at a whopping $2.5 billion valuation.

Its breakout has turned the college dropout into one of AI's hottest young founders and put his tiny startup in direct competition with another company started by a college dropout: Meta.

Noah Shinn dropped out of Northeastern University in 2023 and quietly developed a reputation as something of an AI wunderkind.

He's been publishing high-level research papers on AI agents — exactly what Instinct does — since he was an undergrad, when he stood out to his professors for his drive and independence.

He also has a competitive streak from his days as an avid basketball player, to reportedly getting his investors to stop backing a rival startup.

Instinct's rapid rise captures a new phase of the AI race.

After years of competing over which company could build the smartest chatbot, the battle is shifting toward assistants that can actually get things done, such as booking hotels, scheduling meetings, and handling everyday errands with minimal prompting.

Meta and other tech giants have enormous advantages in money, computing power, and distribution.

Shinn's unlikely ascent shows how quickly a small startup with the right product can still compete against Big Tech.

Shinn didn't respond to interview requests.

A spokesperson for Instinct confirmed several biographical details.

The undergrad behind a pioneering AI paper Weeks after the November 2022 launch of ChatGPT , Shinn — then a Northeastern undergraduate — answered a LinkedIn post from MIT professor Ashwin Gopinath, who was looking for students to tinker with the new technology over the holidays.