Notion plans 30% headcount increase to boost AI development

Notion wants more humans, which is a slightly counterintuitive headline for a company that already deploys over 700 AI agents to help its roughly 1,100 employees do their jobs. But CEO Ivan Zhao is betting that scaling the workforce by about 30% this year is exactly what the AI moment requires. The hiring push spans engineering and AI roles, product management, go-to-market functions, and recruiting itself, the last one being a tell: when a company starts hiring people to hire people, the expansion is real and not just a press release. The numbers behind the ambition As of September 2025, the company crossed $500M in annual revenue, a milestone that arrived faster than most observers expected when Notion was still primarily known as the note-taking app beloved by productivity enthusiasts and startup founders. What changed the trajectory was AI. Features tied to Notion AI and its autonomous agents now account for more than half of the company’s total revenue, a figure that reframes the entire business. Notion is no longer a workspace tool that added AI on top. It is, by its own revenue math, an AI company that also makes a very good workspace tool. A secondary transaction in January...