Pinecone reinvests hours saved from using Notion AI into building revolutionary AI products

Generative AI couldn’t be where it is now without vector databases. Since 2019, Pinecone’s fully-managed serverless vector database software provides the critical storage and retrieval infrastructure that allows companies to build and run AI applications accurately, securely, and at scale. And with the rapid pace of AI development, the company has been growing at breakneck speed.

During Alicia Carmen Raymond's first year as Director of People at Pinecone, she saw the company's headcount nearly triple. This rapid growth created significant challenges. Finding relevant and accurate information became nearly impossible as knowledge was scattered across different Google Drive folders, random slide decks, or simply stored in employees' heads. New hires couldn't tell if their searches were unsuccessful because they were looking in the wrong place, lacked proper access, or because the information didn't exist at all.

But finding the right information wasn’t just a People team problem. Sales needed to keep up with complex product and competitive knowledge. Engineering teams faced similar issues with their documentation, leading to duplication, inconsistencies, and out-of-date information. It became clear that everyone at Pinecone needed a more streamlined approach to knowledge sharing and collaboration.

Up to that point, Pinecone didn’t have a structured company knowledge base. Google Drive was a clunky hodgepodge of content that lacked the architecture to keep everything organized and discoverable. Alicia knew Pinecone needed a better long-term solution, but traditional, static company wikis are notoriously disliked by employees and often fall into the same pitfalls of disarray and low usage.

Finding that solution didn’t take long because a lot of employees were already asking for Notion. They loved using Notion on their own or at a previous company, sharing all the ways Pinecone could use it not only as a company wiki but for their own team’s planning and daily work. They also pointed out that Pinecone’s own product helps power Notion AI, which would help them easily find exactly what they needed in their workspace.

Often when a new work tool is rolled out, companies have to force adoption. However, Pinecone found that wasn’t the case with Notion. Employees had already used it in their personal lives or at other companies and were eager to adopt it, which made the change management process very easy. Enthusiasm translated into creative, team-driven rollout across the entire company.

With Notion's flexibility, each Pinecone team can customize how they use the workspace to suit their specific needs. When Jake Kokos joined to lead Commercial Sales, he found critical team information scattered across various tools, buried in Google Docs and Sheets, or simply undocumented. Drawing inspiration from the People team's success, Jake mobilized the sales organization to consolidate all their resources within their Notion teamspace.

Each deal has a dedicated Notion page where team members craft their approach, maintain detailed notes, and integrate information from specialized tools like Gong and Salesforce. With everything in one sales hub, everyone can see what goes into every deal and use Notion AI to instantly create win reports. This shared knowledge helps other Sales reps learn best practices for their own sales cycles and gives teams like product marketing ideas for enablement materials. This real-time knowledge sharing is vital—it ensures everyone has access to an up-to-date knowledge base, rather than relying on information that gets lost in emails or Slack channels that people might miss. "Notion allows us to march to the same drumbeat and keep that drumbeat more consistent," Jake says of the impact.

The sales team also leverages Notion to maintain up-to-date knowledge of complex technical details and industry information. With their technical documentation and internal enablement materials centralized in Notion, team members can access everything they need in one place and quickly answer customer questions during calls. They also use Notion AI to craft targeted, effective prospecting messages in seconds that synthesizes the latest knowledge from across their workspace and other tools connected to it.

The results speak volumes: leveraging Notion AI's time-saving capabilities, consolidated knowledge resources, and powerful AI-assisted editing features has dramatically increased the sales team's productivity—from an average of 50 to 400 touch points per week—helping them double their weekly booked meetings. With this surge in sales activity, Pinecone's commercial reach has rapidly expanded, now serving over 20,000 organizations worldwide.

Engineers naturally gravitate toward Notion for its flexibility, powerful organizational features, and seamless technical documentation capabilities. As natural problem-solvers, they appreciate Notion's intuitive approach to structuring complex information and workflows in ways that complement their systematic thinking. The platform's markdown shortcuts feel familiar to technical teams, while code blocks with syntax highlighting make documentation clearer and more usable. With native integrations for GitHub, Jira, and other developer tools, engineers can keep their specialized workflows while maintaining visibility across teams.

Shared context reduces rework and accelerates shipping — a core principle that makes Notion particularly valuable to engineering teams. By centralizing documentation, decisions, and discussions in one connected workspace, engineers spend less time searching for information and more time building.

That's why all of Pinecone's technical documentation is now centralized in Notion. "The best engineers obsess over their efficiency, in the same way that top chefs won't tolerate blunt knives. They want to use tools like Notion that aid their work instead of slowing them down," explains David Haikney, VP of Field Engineering.

Since everyone at Pinecone uses Notion, it's easier to discover information and understand what everyone is working on, even if that work happens in another tool they have integrated within Notion. This makes it easier for teams like engineering to feel more informed and involved in the work happening across the company.

What started as a company wiki to help employees better find company information has evolved into a new way of working based on knowledge sharing. Everyone at Pinecone runs on Notion—new hires start using it on day one, leveraging its AI-powered search to quickly get up to speed and start making an immediate impact.

By providing a flexible, AI-enhanced workspace, Notion has helped Pinecone streamline their processes, foster collaboration, and maintain their competitive edge in the rapidly evolving AI industry.