Instinct and Muse reach calling parity as both launch outbound phone features

The two leading contenders in the text-based assistant race — San Francisco-based Instinct, the category leader with a reported $10 billion valuation, and Meta's newly launched Muse — both rolled out outbound calling capabilities this week, closing the gap with smaller rivals that had already made the feature a core selling point.

Instinct unveiled "Instinct Concierge." Founder Noah Shinn posted on X that the new feature can book tables at restaurants that don't accept online reservations, join dentist waitlists, or dispute erroneous cable bills. The launch begins in early access for a subset of users, with plans to expand broadly. Last week Instinct also introduced dedicated email addresses so agents can manage sign-ups and accounts on users' behalf, and enabled agents belonging to different users to communicate via a "trusted network" for coordinating shared tasks.

Meta responded almost simultaneously. Muse, which debuted only last week, gained the ability to call U.S. businesses. The initial rollout is limited to users who explicitly ask Muse to place a call; the company describes this as a feature-request mechanism, with every new capability shipping first to the people who asked for it. The move puts Meta on par with Instinct and neutralizes the calling advantage that smaller competitors such as Wajo, Town and Ollie had been using to differentiate.

The activity around both products shows up in funding and download data. Instinct raised $350 million at a $2.5 billion valuation last month and, according to reports, is in talks for a $1 billion round at the same $10 billion valuation. Analytics firm Sensor Tower says Muse outperformed the Meta AI app launch: 730,000 U.S. downloads in its first days versus 707,000 for Meta AI in its first five, and Muse briefly hit No. 2 on the overall U.S. download chart.

The immediate upshot for users is full parity on calling — no player can any longer sell "I know how to make a phone call" as an exclusive advantage. The competition now shifts to execution quality: how well an agent handles a receptionist, whether it can navigate IVR menus, and whether the trust network between agents actually saves time or simply adds another coordination layer. For now, both companies are shipping fast, and significant capital continues to flow into a category that until recently was considered a niche experiment.