Kais Khimji, a former partner at Sequoia Capital, announced the launch of his AI-powered calendar scheduling startup, Blockit, on Thursday. The company secured a $5 million seed round led by Sequoia, marking a significant endorsement from Khimji's former employer. Blockit aims to streamline and automate the often cumbersome process of scheduling meetings using advanced AI agents.

Khimji initially conceived the idea for Blockit roughly a decade ago while a student at Harvard. He believes that recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) enable Blockit's AI to handle scheduling with greater efficiency and seamlessness compared to previous attempts at automated scheduling. These earlier ventures include Clara Labs and x.ai, the latter of which saw its domain name acquired by Elon Musk's AI company.

"Blockit has a chance to become a $1 billion revenue business, and Kais will make sure it gets there," wrote Pat Grady, Sequoia's general partner and co-steward who led the investment, in a blog post.

Blockit differentiates itself from existing scheduling tools like Calendly by leveraging AI to proactively manage and negotiate calendar appointments. While Calendly primarily automates the process of offering available time slots, Blockit's AI agents are designed to understand context, prioritize meetings, and handle complex scheduling conflicts. This involves interpreting natural language requests, understanding individual preferences, and autonomously adjusting schedules to optimize time management.

The company enters a market that has seen both successes and failures. While Calendly has established itself as a category leader, other startups attempting to automate scheduling have struggled to gain traction or have ultimately shut down. Khimji argues that the increased sophistication of LLMs provides Blockit with a technological advantage that was not available to its predecessors.

The seed funding will be used to further develop Blockit's AI capabilities, expand its team, and launch its product to a wider audience. The company aims to initially target professionals and businesses that spend a significant amount of time scheduling meetings, with plans to expand its offerings to other areas of personal and professional productivity in the future. The launch of Blockit represents a renewed effort to tackle the challenges of automated scheduling, backed by significant venture capital and leveraging the latest advancements in artificial intelligence.