Cognition Acquires Poke, AI Agent for iMessage

Cognition, the AI coding startup behind Devin, has acquired The Interaction Company of California, the maker of Poke, in a deal valuing the smaller company in the "low nine figures." Poke built its name as a text-based AI assistant that users message like a friend rather than command like a tool, complete with slang, jokes and a personality that doesn't read like customer service software. Cognition plans to fold that interaction style into Devin, its coding assistant, while giving Poke access to its models and infrastructure to run faster and more reliably.

The acquisition price wasn't disclosed publicly until Interaction Company co-founder Marvin von Hagen confirmed it directly to TechCrunch. He also laid out the thinking behind the deal: coding agents are starting to resemble coworkers, and coworkers with personality tend to be more pleasant to work with than ones that act like robots. That logic is pushing Cognition toward a broader industry question, one that's shaping how AI companies compete now that raw model capability is no longer the only differentiator. Increasingly, the interaction layer, how an assistant talks, jokes and behaves, is becoming its own kind of product.