Martha Stewart has joined the co-founding team at Hint, a new application designed to manage home maintenance and upkeep using artificial intelligence. The app launches today.
What the app does
Homeowners can use the Hint app to handle maintenance schedules, energy management, and data on soil and air quality. The tool also assists with weighing insurance claims and storing contracts, files, and invoices related to the property. Users query this information through a built-in AI assistant.
Kyle Rush, co-founder and CTO based in New York, says Stewart lives nearby and is very involved with the startup. She is not a financial investor but holds a serious stake in equity and performs work for the company.
“She’s a real co-founder with a serious stake in equity, and she does work for the company and the app. She’s not a figurehead. I go over about twice a week,” he says.
“We sit down and look at the app, and she looks at what it’s saying — when it’s wrong about soil, she’ll say it, and when it’s not right about something about the home…she’ll mention it, and she’ll comment on what I design and the branding and the language. And so she’s, I would say, very involved.”
The startup began in 2024 as a tool to help people navigate decarbonization incentives for their homes. The team realised that broadening the use cases offered more potential, so they pivoted to a general home management assistant.
“We really quickly realised, why can’t this be the AI for your home? People don’t really have an app to manage their homes…so we just pivoted,” Rush says.
To start, users enter their home address. The app builds a profile using public data such as property records, weather, soil information, and utility usage. Users can then upload documents including inspection reports, home warranties, mortgage documents, contracts, insurance policies, and invoices.
The system processes this data to reveal details about the soil beneath the foundation and how it may affect lawn drainage or foundation movement. It also provides information on local air quality, climate data, drought risks, flood potential, insurance rates, and energy usage.
Homeowners upload photos of major appliances, allowing the app to guide them through maintenance tasks. This reveals smaller upkeep duties many people overlook.
For instance, while users may know to change a refrigerator’s water filter, they might not know to vacuum coils on some models to prevent fire hazards. The app also advises on when to flush a water heater or check salt levels for a home well.
Hint sends proactive push notifications based on a personalised maintenance schedule that evolves with the house, its systems, and the macro environment. Users can also add one-off tasks to their plans, such as replacing a damaged window screen or re-caulking baseboards.
The app provides an overall “home score,” a number indicating how well the user is managing their property to date.
The in-app AI chatbot answers questions about the home or uploaded documents. Users can ask when the air conditioning was last serviced, what they pay per kilowatt hour for electricity, or whether a home equity line of credit makes sense. It also guides homeowners on insurance deductibles, missing coverage, and whether filing a claim for a repair is advisable.
Background and funding
Before founding Hint, Rush led engineering at mattress startup Casper during its growth phase and served as CTO at online retailer Maisonette. Earlier, he built technology for both the Obama and Hillary presidential campaigns. Yih-Han Ma, co-founder and CEO based in Charlotte, N.C., was previously SVP and GM at Red Ventures.
Rush says the idea came from an interest in applied AI technology and how it could serve the average homeowner in a practical way. Under the hood, Hint uses commercial libraries, largely from OpenAI, as well as Gemini for image work.
The plan is to keep the AI intelligence free, with a premium subscription to follow that could introduce features like managing additional properties. The app currently generates affiliate revenue from a partner network of service providers, which Rush says is firewalled from the AI to avoid bias.
Hint, whose name combines the “H” from “home” with “intelligence,” is backed by $10 million in funding from investors including Montauk Capital, Brian Kelly of The Points Guy, Slow Ventures, Tusk Venture Partners, Energy Impact Partners, Amplo VC, and Hannah Grey.
The iOS app is available for free without subscriptions or ads.
“We want it to be in the hands of every homeowner in the country,” says Rush.
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