Notion AI

In 2015, with their startup nearly bankrupt and their four-person team laid off, Ivan Zhao and Simon Last moved to Kyoto, Japan, and spent 18 hours a day writing code and eating noodles. They rebuilt Notion from scratch — new tech stack, new architecture, new everything. They had no guarantee it would work. When Notion 1.0 shipped in 2018, it worked. When Notion 2.0 shipped the same year with databases, it changed how an entire generation of knowledge workers organized their professional lives. Today Notion has 100 million users, a $10 billion valuation, and zero VC board seats — Zhao retained unusual control specifically so the product could stay focused on being genuinely useful rather than growing for its own sake.

The AI chapter started in February 2023 with a writing assistant, and has accelerated dramatically since. The separate Notion AI add-on was eliminated in May 2025, and full AI access — including AI Agents and Ask Notion — was bundled into the Business plan at $20/user/month, which now includes GPT-4.1 and Claude 3.7 Sonnet for generation, AI Meeting Notes that automatically attach to every calendar event, and AI Search that surfaces answers from across Notion, Slack, Google Drive, GitHub, and Notion Mail simultaneously. AI Agents — launched September 2025 — handle repetitive tasks autonomously and are free to try, then $10 per 1,000 credits. Notion Mail, released April 2025 as a Gmail-based email client with AI-native triage, draft assistance, and meeting scheduling built in, extends the vision further: Notion is no longer a document tool with AI bolted on. It is an ambient intelligence layer over how teams communicate, organize, and execute — positioned to compete directly with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace at a price point that includes AI by default.