History
Notion Labs, Inc. was founded by Ivan Zhao, Akshay Kothari, Chris Prucha, Jessica Lam, Simon Last, and Toby Schachman as a San Francisco startup in 2013. It was funded by an initial seed round of around $2 million. The company encountered financial challenges during development of the app. Notion 1.0 released in August 2016, which was quickly adopted by a small group of tech enthusiasts.
The release of Notion 2.0 in March 2018 marked a major milestone for the app, as its popularity quickly grew from this point onward. In September 2019, the company announced it had reached one million users.
Soon after in January 2020, Notion raised $50 million from Index Ventures and others, valuing the company at $2 billion. In May of that same year, the company announced that users on its free plan would be able to create unlimited "blocks," where they were previously restricted to 1,000 before needing to pay for premium plans—significantly opening the app to the average person.
Notion acquired an India-based startup, Automate.io, which develops integrations between a variety of services in September 2021. A month later in October, Notion raised $275 in a funding round led by Coatue Management and Sequoia Capital. The investment valued Notion at $10 billion, and the company announced it had reached 20 million users.
The company acquired Cron, a calendar app, on June 9, 2022, which Notion later developed into Notion Calendar. Launched on January 17, 2024, Notion Calendar was its first standalone app and offered greater integration with Notion and a scheduling tool similar to Calendly.
In February 2023, Notion released its "Notion AI" chatbot service which could be used in a workspace.
Notion Mail released in April 2025 as a Gmail-based email client with Notion AI integraton, and was based on infrastructure obtained when the company acquired Skiff, an email service, on February 9, 2024.
The company launched version 3.0 in September 2025, which included a new AI agent feature. AI integration would further expand in May 2026 when Notion launched its Notion Developer Platform, which introduced a cloud-based environmen for running custom code in secure sandboxes, database sync for pulling data from sources like Salesforce and Zendesk, and external agent integration.
Features
Notes consist of "blocks," which make up every line or paragraph. These can contain text, images, subpages, and databases. Databases can display information about pages in different views, including tables, lists, calendars, and timelines.
Notion has a library of free and paid templates. Additionally, it features a variety of integrations with other apps and generative AI.