In January 2026, the AI-native scheduling startup Blockit (officially blockit AI) emerged from stealth with $5 million in Seed funding. The round was led by Sequoia Capital, marking a high-conviction bet on the “agentic calendar” category.
The company is led by Co-Founders Kais Khimji (a former partner at Sequoia Capital) and John Han (a product veteran from Google Calendar and Clockwise). Blockit is moving beyond traditional “link-sharing” tools to build a sophisticated AI agent that negotiates scheduling conflicts and protects focus time autonomously.
The current productivity stack is suffering from “scheduling friction,” where professionals spend hours on low-value coordination. Blockit addresses this by deploying an agent that understands user intent and social hierarchies to negotiate the best possible time slot. This move toward intent-driven automation follows the same architecture as autonomous contract intelligence, where agents handle the nuances of multi-party negotiation.
The new capital will be used to scale its engineering team and refine its proprietary “Calendar Logic” models. By enforcing strict time-priority rules, Blockit provides an operational safeguard similar to AI-native logic enforcement layers, ensuring that an executive’s most valuable asset—time—is protected by systemic guardrails.
Market Signal
- The “End of the Calendly Era”: Blockit’s $5M round validates that the market is moving past “Link-Shaming” culture. The future belongs to “Inbound Agents” that act as digital chiefs of staff, a trend consistent with the rise of agentic professional services platforms.
- Founder-Market Velocity: Kais Khimji’s transition from a Sequoia partner to a founder mirrors the path of alumni like David Vélez (Nubank). His insider knowledge of enterprise bottlenecks, combined with John Han’s decade of experience in calendar systems, creates a formidable “Product-Investor” pedigree.
- Time as a Programmable Asset: By treating a calendar as a set of logical constraints, Blockit is turning time management into a programmable infrastructure layer. This “Software-Defined Time” model allows enterprises to maximize “Deep Work” ROI across their organizations.
Key Details
- Company: Blockit (blockit AI)
- Funding: $5M Seed
- Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
- Lead Investor: Sequoia Capital
- Founders: Kais Khimji, John Han
- Use Case: Autonomous AI calendar negotiation, intent-driven scheduling, and executive focus protection
