{"id":549977,"date":"2026-07-29T18:38:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T18:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/549977\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T18:38:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T18:38:16","slug":"hint-a-new-ai-startup-co-founded-by-martha-stewart-offers-an-ai-assistant-for-homeowners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/549977\/","title":{"rendered":"Hint, a new AI startup co-founded by Martha Stewart, offers an AI assistant for homeowners"},"content":{"rendered":"

Martha Stewart is entering the AI software era in the most Martha Stewart way possible: she has joined the co-founding team at Hint, an app that leverages AI technology to manage the tasks surrounding home maintenance and management. With the Hint<\/a> app, which launches today, homeowners can tackle challenges around maintenance schedules and tasks, energy management, learn about their soil and air quality, weigh insurance claims, and more.<\/p>\n

It can also serve as storage for various contracts, files, and invoices related to the home and its upkeep, which can be queried through the built-in AI assistant. <\/p>\n

\"\"Martha StewartImage Credits:Kathryn Cooper<\/p>\n

Co-founder and CTO at Hint, New York-based Kyle Rush, says the home and hospitality empire founder lives nearby and is \u201cvery involved\u201d with the startup, but not a financial investor. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s a real co-founder with a serious stake in equity, and she does work for the company and the app. She\u2019s not a figurehead. I go over about twice a week,\u201d he says. \u201cWe sit down and look at the app, and she looks at what it\u2019s saying \u2014 when it\u2019s wrong about soil, she\u2019ll say it, and when it\u2019s not right about something about the home\u2026she\u2019ll mention it, and she\u2019ll comment on what I design and the branding and the language. And so she\u2019s, I would say, very involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

The startup originally began in 2024 as a tool to help people navigate decarbonization incentives related to their home, but realized that broadening its use cases had more potential. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe really quickly realized, why can\u2019t this be the AI for your home? People don\u2019t really have an app to manage their homes\u2026so we just pivoted,\u201d says Rush. <\/p>\n

The app<\/a> joins others in the AI ecosystem that are working to expand AI beyond chatbots to apply the technology to solve real-world problems, while also adding Martha Stewart\u2019s personal expertise to refine the experience. <\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Hint<\/p>\n

To get started with Hint<\/a>, users enter their home address, and the app builds a profile of the home from public data, like property records, weather and soil information, utilities, and more. Users can then upload documents, like inspection reports, home warranties, mortgage documents, contracts, insurance policies, invoices, and more.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Hint<\/p>\n

This data can tell you things about the soil below the foundation, and how that may affect lawn drainage or foundation risk movement. You can also learn about the air quality surrounding your home or how climate or drought information could impact the potential for floods, your home insurance rates, or your energy usage, among other things. <\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Hint<\/p>\n

Then, homeowners upload photos of the home\u2019s major appliances, which allows the app to guide you through any \u201chow to\u201d questions or other maintenance tasks. <\/p>\n

This can be surprisingly revealing, as many people don\u2019t know about the smaller tasks related to appliance upkeep. <\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Hint<\/p>\n

For instance, you may know to change your refrigerator\u2019s water filter, but did you know that you should occasionally vacuum out the coils on some models to prevent fire hazards? Do you know when to flush a water heater or when to check the salt level for a home well?<\/p>\n

Hint\u2019s personalized home maintenance schedule means you won\u2019t have to remember these things, as it sends proactive push notifications about what needs attention and when. This schedule evolves with your home, leveraging its understanding of the house itself, its systems, and the macro environment. <\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Hint<\/p>\n

This is where Martha Stewart\u2019s decades of experience in managing homes comes into play, as she\u2019s guided the app development in key areas. In addition, homeowners can use Hint to add one-off tasks to their maintenance plans \u2014 like a reminder to replace a damaged window screen or re-caulk some baseboards, or anything else that comes up.<\/p>\n

Hint also provides an overall \u201chome score,\u201d offering an at-a-glance number that tells you how good of a job you\u2019re doing managing your home to date. <\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Hint<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Hint\u2019s in-app AI chatbot lets you ask any questions related to your home or your documents. That means you could ask questions as simple as when the last time you had the AC serviced was, or as complex as what you\u2019re paying per kilowatt hour for electricity or whether a HELOC<\/a> would be a good idea to tap into your home equity.<\/p>\n

The app can also guide you through questions related to your homeowner\u2019s insurance, like whether your deductibles are too high, if you\u2019re missing coverage, or whether it makes sense to file a claim for a repair.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Hint<\/p>\n

Ahead of founding Hint, Rush led engineering at mattress startup Casper during its growth phase and was CTO at online retailer Maisonette. Before that, he built technology for both the Obama and Hillary presidential campaigns. Yih-Han Ma<\/a>,\u00a0co-founder and CEO, based out of Charlotte, N.C., was previously SVP and GM at Red Ventures, a digital media and technology company.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Hint<\/p>\n

Rush says the idea for Hint came about as he grew interested in applied AI technology and how it could be put to use for the average homeowner in a more practical way. Under the hood, Hint uses commercial libraries, largely those from OpenAI, as well as Gemini for image work. <\/p>\n

The plan is to keep Hint\u2019s AI intelligence free, but later add a premium subscription that could introduce power user features like managing additional properties. The app today generates affiliate revenue from its partner network of service providers, which Rush says is firewalled from the AI so it\u2019s not biased in its recommendations. <\/p>\n

Hint<\/a> (whose name combines the \u201cH\u201d from \u201chome\u201d with \u201cintelligence\u201d) is backed by $10 million<\/a> in funding from investors, including Montauk Capital, Brian Kelly (The Points Guy), Slow Ventures, Tusk Venture Partners, Energy Impact Partners, Amplo VC, and Hannah Grey.<\/p>\n

The iOS app<\/a> is currently available for free without subscriptions or ads. \u201cWe want it to be in the hands of every homeowner in the country,\u201d says Rush.<\/p>\n

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Martha Stewart is entering the AI software era in the most Martha Stewart way possible: she has joined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,93631,48438,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-549977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-hint","tag-martha-stewart","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}