Notion Believes the Best Software Works the Way Your Brain Works

“We want to help people build software that works the way their minds work,” said Akshay Kothari, Notion’s co-founder and Chief Operating Officer. “Our dream is that you just need one product, and it covers a lot of the core software use cases.”

For much of its early life, Notion was known as a flexible notes app. Clean, customizable, and widely adopted by individual users and small teams. But over the past two years, the company has been methodically recasting itself into something else. A deeply integrated workspace platform, built to centralize the scattered workflows of modern teams, and now powered by AI.

Its newest feature, an AI-based meeting transcription and notetaking tool, marks Notion’s entry into a competitive category dominated by startups like Otter, Circleback, Granola, and Read AI, as well as built-in offerings from Zoom and ClickUp. The feature allows users to record meetings, automatically transcribe audio, and generate summaries formatted for different use cases like sales calls, standups, or team meetings. While the AI runs in the background, users can simultaneously take manual notes. The feature currently supports over a dozen languages and is available for Mac desktop users (app version 4.7.0), with mobile support expected.

To initiate transcription, users type “/meet” into any Notion page. A dialog prompts them to confirm consent from meeting participants. Once the meeting ends, the AI generates a structured summary with optional formatting templates. The tool captures system audio, and like similar tools in the space, it emphasizes data privacy by restricting access to only those with prior permissions.

The new tool sits alongside a series of AI capabilities rolled out by Notion as part of a broader enterprise offering. Enterprise Search, for instance, allows users to retrieve information not only from within Notion, but across third-party platforms such as GitHub, Slack, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Linear, and Jira. The tool returns answers with citations, contextual metadata, and only surfaces information the user already has access to.

Research Mode, another feature launched recently, builds structured, shareable documents by synthesizing internal knowledge with external web sources. Users can ask questions like “What are customers saying about this feature?” or “What updates should we make to the PRD based on recent meetings?” and receive documents backed by linked materials from across connected tools.

Notion AI also assists in automating weekly status updates, sprint notes, and review documents, pulling from tasks, GitHub commits, Slack discussions, and previous summaries. The platform supports embedded content from tools like Figma and Miro, centralizing discussions and project context.

Notion’s AI push reflects a clear product philosophy: build primitives, not point solutions. “We never built the project management solution. What we did was build the primitives that allowed you to build project management,” said Akshay Kothari, Notion’s co-founder and COO. “And the same person who built that can go on and build a CRM tomorrow.”

This architecture has supported the growth of a large template ecosystem. Notion’s internal team created the first few templates, to-do lists, travel planners, reading logs but eventually the community took over. An ambassador program launched in 2019 funded local meetups and encouraged power users to share their creations. Some early ambassadors have since turned their templates into full-fledged businesses. Notion now includes a built-in template marketplace where users can buy and sell their systems.

Internally, Notion uses its own software to run nearly every function of the company — from documentation and meeting notes to sales workflows connected to Salesforce. “We pretty much run the entire company on it,” said Kothari. He also uses Notion personally to take handwritten notes on every book he reads, keeping a searchable archive across his workspace.

In this space, Notion is not alone. Other players, particularly in enterprise search and productivity automation, are building similar capabilities.

Glean, for example, has emerged as a key competitor in the enterprise search category. Its platform connects to workplace tools and delivers AI-powered search and knowledge discovery, surfacing relevant information across an organization’s internal systems. With integrations into tools like Google Workspace, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, Glean positions itself as a unifier of scattered enterprise knowledge. Its differentiator lies in semantic search and adaptive learning from team usage patterns.

Salesforce, meanwhile, has launched Agentforce, a platform that deploys AI agents across its suite to handle tasks like support responses, sales follow-ups, and workflow automation. The agents are embedded into tools like Service Cloud and Sales Cloud, providing enterprise users with guided assistance, pre-written email suggestions, and decision support. Agentforce was built to work natively within Salesforce’s data ecosystem, particularly appealing for large teams already reliant on its CRM infrastructure.

While Notion does not pitch itself directly as an AI assistant or CRM, its strength lies in being a flexible platform that users can configure into various use cases—from internal wikis to lightweight CRM systems. The underlying philosophy, as co-founder Akshay Kothari explains, is about building primitives—foundational components like databases, filters, and views—that users can rewire to fit their workflows.

“We never built the project management solution. What we did was build the primitive that allowed you to build project management,” Kothari said. “The same people who did that can also go ahead and build a CRM on Notion tomorrow.”

In May 2025, Notion launched its long-anticipated email client, Notion Mail. Built on the technology acquired through its 2023 purchase of Skiff, the tool integrates directly with Gmail and allows users to organize, filter, and automate their inbox with AI support. Like other Notion products, it emphasizes user configurability and tight integration with the rest of the workspace. Many users, including early beta testers, have reported canceling paid email clients like Superhuman in favor of Notion’s native solution.

That launch followed the 2024 debut of Notion Calendar. “These products have existed for a while,” said Kothari, “but nobody really put the productivity products together in a way that can really feel effective.”

While Notion’s product line has expanded, the company has stayed intentionally lean in size. Even after reaching 1,000 employees, hiring decisions remain highly selective. “We try to hold out until we find someone great, not settle for someone who’s good,” Kothari said. He pointed out that a smaller team enables faster movement, fewer coordination costs, and better systems. “We’re not trying to be extra profitable. We just recognize the cost of adding people is real.”

This approach has found traction with companies like OpenAI, Vercel, and Ramp. Ramp, in particular, consolidated several of its internal tools into Notion, reducing software licensing costs by over 70%. According to Ramp, teams now locate information up to 60% faster and complete some projects three times quicker. Product, marketing, IT, and leadership teams all now work from a single connected hub, using Notion for updates, feedback processing, documentation, and meeting recaps.

The company’s infrastructure has not always kept up with demand. In 2020, Notion narrowly avoided a prolonged outage after a single PostgreSQL database powering the entire user base reached capacity. The team halted feature development and focused entirely on sharding the database across multiple systems. “We were days away from being completely hard down,” said Kothari.

Asked whether Notion could go public, Kothari didn’t offer a timeline but acknowledged the company is laying the operational groundwork. “You need to be able to run a predictable business, report accurately, close the books quickly,” he said. “Some things are in your control, some aren’t. But we want to be ready.”

He cites Atlassian and Shopify, both of whom went public early with modest market caps—as companies that focused less on timing the market and more on consistent performance. “Being ready yourself comes before thinking about the markets,” he said.

Reflecting on Notion’s survival during near-collapse moments in 2016 and again in 2020, Kothari doesn’t focus on luck. Instead, he returns to the company’s central question. “We’re not here to make Notion look cool,” he said. “We’re here to make the next generation of builders and creators look cool.”