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Poke, the AI assistant you text like a friend<\/a>, is making its next big move. The company behind the assistant, The Interaction Company of California<\/a>, has been acquired<\/a> by AI coding startup Cognition in a deal valuing the startup in the \u201clow nine figures.\u201d <\/p>\n The deal will bring Poke\u2019s interaction model and personality to Cognition\u2019s coding assistant Devin. Meanwhile, Poke will take advantage of Cognition\u2019s models and infrastructure to become faster and more reliable, Cognition said.<\/p>\n What makes Poke interesting to consumers \u2014 and now, to its acquirer \u2014 is how it engages with users\u2019 requests. Instead of functioning like a tool, Poke chats more familiarly with users, responding like a friend and even incorporating slang and humor into its interactions. That\u2019s something that could add value to Devin\u2019s coding agent.<\/p>\n \u201cYou probably prefer it if you have co-workers that have personality, rather than if you have co-workers that are just robots,\u201d explained Interaction Company co-founder\u00a0Marvin von Hagen<\/a>, in an interview with TechCrunch, where he also confirmed the deal\u2019s price. \u201cWhen you have co-workers that are also software engineers, they can also make a joke. And you\u2019ll find it funny and enjoyable.\u201d<\/p>\n The acquisition underscores a growing belief that how AI assistants interact with users will become just as valuable as the underlying models powering them. Cognition wants to make Devin feel less like software and more like a colleague.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Interaction team has built an agent that people love: it\u2019s proactive, it knows you, and it\u2019s fun to talk to. That\u2019s exactly how working with Devin should feel, and now we get to build it together,\u201d Cognition co-founder Scott Wu wrote in a blog post.<\/p>\n He also noted that he and Cognition co-founder Walden Yan had been angel investors in the company behind Poke.<\/p>\n First launched in March 2026, Poke allows users to engage with its AI agent through their messaging platform of choice, whether that\u2019s iMessage, SMS, Telegram, or, in some markets, WhatsApp. People use Poke for a variety of tasks<\/a>, across categories like travel, health, finance, scheduling, and education.<\/p>\n Von Hagen noted that productivity tasks like managing emails, reminders, and to-dos were among Poke\u2019s most common use cases.<\/p>\n Over the past three months, Poke users exchanged more than 100 million messages on the platform, Cognition said. But despite being used by hundreds of thousands of people, Poke had been expensive to run, making it difficult to turn a profit, von Hagen said.<\/p>\n In June, Poke became the first AI agent to be approved<\/a> to run on Apple\u2019s Messages for Business platform, which provides businesses with a standardized experience for handling their customer communications within Apple\u2019s Messages app.<\/p>\n Going forward, nothing will immediately change for Poke through the end of the year, we\u2019re told. Poke plans to remain on Apple\u2019s platform.<\/p>\n However, next year the team will experiment with how both Poke and Devin can improve, with Poke turning to Cognition\u2019s newest software engineering model SWE-1.7<\/a> for some tasks. Fully combining the two products has not been ruled out, either.<\/p>\n \u201cI think in the long term Poke can be more reliable with orchestrating all these coding [tasks]\u2026and, at the same time, Devin could become more like Poke,\u201d von Hagen said. \u201cLike right now, Devin can only do one PR \u2014 pull request \u2014 at a time\u2026I think there\u2019s a lot of value in having Poke orchestrate different Devin sessions.\u201d Plus, Poke could help Devin remember tasks across different sessions. <\/p>\n \u201cIt would be good to have a persistent co-worker,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n