Poke
Poke is a personal AI assistant that works over iMessage, WhatsApp, SMS, and Telegram instead of its own app.
Acquired Poke
Acquired · July 2026
Poke put a proactive AI assistant inside iMessage, WhatsApp, SMS, and Telegram, becoming the first AI agent approved for Apple’s Messages for Business platform and passing 100 million messages in three months. Cognition, the maker of Devin, acquired its parent The Interaction Company of California in July 2026 in a deal reported in the low nine figures. Poke still operates as a standalone product, with Cognition models due behind some tasks from 2027.
Acquired by Cognition.
Last known pricing: Free tier + Pro $19/month + Ultra $199/month
Is Poke shut down?
No — Poke is still operating, but it no longer stands alone: it was acquired by Cognition on July 23, 2026 and continues under the acquirer's ownership. We list it in the ToolDirectory.AI graveyard's acquired-but-operating section and watch for post-acquisition changes.
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Overview
Poke
Poke is a personal AI assistant that lives inside the messaging apps you already use instead of behind its own app icon. You sign up at poke.com with a phone number, then talk to it in iMessage, SMS, WhatsApp, or Telegram. Connect Gmail or Outlook plus your calendar and Poke drafts and sends replies, reschedules meetings, flags invoices, books travel, and texts you first when something needs attention. Automations are described in plain language — "tell me if anything from my landlord lands" — and Poke assembles them. Each task is routed to whichever model suits it rather than to one fixed provider, which co-founder Marvin von Hagen has argued is a structural advantage over assistants shipped by the model labs themselves.
Acquisition note (July 2026): Cognition, the company behind the Devin coding agent, acquired Poke's maker, The Interaction Company of California, in a deal reported in the low nine figures and announced on 23 July 2026. Poke keeps running as a standalone product with no immediate changes and stays on Apple's Messages for Business platform; from 2027 Cognition plans to put its own SWE-1.7 model behind some tasks, and a fuller product merge has not been ruled out.
Production credibility: Founded in Palo Alto by Marvin von Hagen and Felix Schlegel, who met at a school hackathon in Germany and later led the 65-person TUM Boring team that won Elon Musk's 2021 Not-a-Boring Competition. Raised a $15M seed at a roughly $100M valuation led by General Catalyst, with Village Global, Earlybird, and angels from PayPal, Coinbase, Dropbox, and Google. More than 100 million messages were exchanged in the three months to July 2026, across hundreds of thousands of users, and in June 2026 Poke became the first AI agent approved for Apple's Messages for Business platform.
Key Features
- Runs in iMessage, SMS, WhatsApp, and Telegram — nothing to install
- Gmail and Outlook connections with proactive inbox triage and drafted replies
- Calendar access for scheduling and rescheduling from inside a text thread
- Plain-language automations that watch for events and message you first
- Per-task model routing rather than a single fixed provider
- Free tier; Pro at $19/month and Ultra at $199/month add frontier models, higher rate limits, and real-time background automations
Ideal Use Case
Someone who already lives in their messages and wants inbox and calendar work to happen in the same place, without another dashboard to check. The free tier covers app connections and everyday requests; Pro suits anyone leaning on background automations, and Ultra is aimed at heavy users who want frontier models behind every action with pay-as-you-go usage on top.
How Poke differentiates
Rival assistants ask you to open their app or their chat window. Poke's bet is the opposite — the assistant should arrive in the thread you are already reading, and start conversations rather than wait to be summoned. Approval for Apple's Messages for Business platform, a first for an AI agent, is a distribution position competitors cannot copy quickly. The trade-off is narrow integration coverage: Gmail and Outlook are the only supported mail providers, and the team has said iCloud and Yahoo are not on the near-term roadmap.
FAQ
Is Poke free? There is a free tier that covers app connections and everyday requests with no credit card. Poke Pro is $19/month for frontier models, real-time background automations, and higher rate limits; Poke Ultra is $199/month with the highest limits and pay-as-you-go usage beyond the included credits.
Which messaging apps does Poke work in? iMessage, SMS, WhatsApp, and Telegram. It was the first AI agent approved for Apple's Messages for Business platform, in June 2026.
Which email providers does Poke support? Gmail and Outlook only. iCloud and Yahoo are not supported and the team has said they are not on the near-term roadmap.
Who owns Poke? Cognition, the maker of the Devin coding agent, acquired The Interaction Company of California in July 2026 in a deal reported in the low nine figures. Poke continues to operate as a standalone product.
tl;dr
Poke is the AI assistant you text: it lives in iMessage, WhatsApp, SMS, and Telegram, runs your email and calendar, and messages you first when something matters. Free to start, $19/month for Pro, and Cognition-owned since July 2026.
Related
Looking for more options? Browse the AI Agents directory or the Productivity category, or read our best AI agents listicle.
Why Use Poke
