Cognition’s Acquisition of Poke: AI Personality Becomes a Competitive Advantage
The AI assistant Poke, which allows its users to text with it on a personal level as if chatting with a close friend, is making its next major move in the tech market. The company behind the personal assistant, The Interaction Company of California, has been officially acquired by AI-driven coding startup Cognition. The acquisition deal values the acquired startup in the "low nine figures" (hundreds of millions of dollars). Under the agreement, Poke’s unique interaction model and friendly personality will be integrated into Cognition’s autonomous coding assistant, Devin. At the same time, Poke will leverage Cognition’s models and infrastructure to become faster and more reliable for its users, Cognition announced in its official statement.
Poke's Personality as a Competitive Advantage in the AI World
What makes Poke particularly intriguing to consumers—and now to its acquirer—is the specific way it chooses to engage with user requests. Instead of functioning like a dry, conventional productivity tool, Poke conducts chat conversations in a highly familiar and close manner, responding like a personal friend and even incorporating slang and humor into its ongoing interactions. This unique characteristic is an element that could add significant value to Cognition's software development agent, Devin.
"You probably prefer it if you have co-workers that have personality, rather than if you have co-workers that are just robots," explained Marvin von Hagen, co-founder of The Interaction Company, in an interview with TechCrunch, in which he confirmed the price range of the acquisition. "When you have co-workers that are also software engineers, they can also make a joke. And you’ll find it funny and enjoyable to work with them."
The startup's acquisition underscores a growing belief within the technology sector that the way AI assistants interact with human users will become a resource just as valuable as the underlying large language models that power them. Cognition aims to make its Devin assistant feel less like a rigid computer program and more like a human colleague or team member on a development project.
"The Interaction team has built an agent that people love: it’s proactive, it knows you, and it’s fun to talk to. That’s exactly how working with Devin should feel, and now we get to build it together," Cognition co-founder Scott Wu wrote in a post on the company's blog. Wu also noted in his post that he and his Cognition co-founder, Walden Yan, were early angel investors in the company behind the development of the Poke assistant.
Poke's Communication Platforms and Use Cases
The Poke agent was first launched in March 2026. The service enables its users to connect and communicate with the AI agent using their preferred and most convenient text messaging platform, whether that is Apple's iMessage, standard SMS messages, Telegram, or, in certain specific markets, WhatsApp. Users leverage Poke to carry out a wide variety of daily tasks spanning different categories such as travel, health, finance, scheduling, and education. Von Hagen pointed out that productivity-oriented tasks—such as managing email inboxes, setting various reminders, and maintaining daily to-do lists—were among the most common use cases for the Poke application's users. Over the past three months alone, Poke users exchanged more than 100 million messages on the platform, according to figures released by Cognition.
Profitability Challenges and Apple Platform Integration
However, despite the fact that the service is widely utilized by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, running Poke was highly expensive, making it difficult for the young startup to turn a profit, Marvin von Hagen explicitly explained in the interview. In June, the service achieved a milestone when Poke became the first AI agent to receive official approval to run on Apple's "Messages for Business" platform. This specialized platform from Apple provides various businesses with a standardized and consistent experience for managing all customer communication workflows directly within Apple's official Messages app.
Future Technological Collaboration
Looking ahead to the near future, TechCrunch was told that nothing is set to change immediately regarding Poke's day-to-day operations between now and the end of this year. The Poke agent plans to continue running as usual and remain available on Apple's business platform. Nevertheless, during the coming year, the joint development team of both companies plans to conduct a series of experiments to evaluate how both products, Poke and Devin, can improve and progress. As part of these efforts, Poke will begin utilizing Cognition’s newest software engineering model, designated SWE-1.7, to execute certain engineering-related tasks. Fully combining the two distinct products into a single offering is a scenario that has not been ruled out by the companies' leadership, and it remains a real option on the table.
Long-Term Vision for Multi-Work Environments
"I think in the long term Poke can be more reliable with orchestrating all these coding [tasks]... and, at the same time, Devin could become more like Poke," von Hagen said. "Like right now, Devin can only do one PR—pull request—at a time... I think there's a lot of value in having Poke orchestrate different Devin sessions." Additionally, the Poke assistant could help Devin remember tasks across separate work sessions. "It would be good to have a persistent co-worker," von Hagen concluded in the interview.