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Cognition Buys Poke AI for Personality Upgrade
24 Jul
Summary
- AI startup Cognition acquired Poke, known for its friendly chatbot persona.
- The deal integrates Poke's interactive model into the Devin coding assistant.
- Poke users exchanged over 100 million messages in the last three months.
The Interaction Company, creators of the AI assistant Poke, has been acquired by Cognition, the AI startup behind the coding assistant Devin. This acquisition, valued in the low nine figures, is set to integrate Poke's unique interaction model and personality into Devin.
Poke is known for its conversational approach, responding to users like a friend, incorporating humor and slang. Cognition aims to imbue Devin with a similar personality, making it feel more like a human colleague.
Launched in March 2026, Poke allows users to interact via various messaging platforms for tasks spanning travel, health, finance, and scheduling. Productivity tasks, such as managing emails and to-dos, are among its most common uses.
Despite exchanging over 100 million messages in the past three months, Poke faced high operational costs. Its integration with Apple's Messages for Business platform in June 2026 provided a standardized customer communication channel.
Going forward, Poke will continue on Apple's platform through the end of the year. In 2027, it will experiment with Cognition's new software engineering model, SWE-1.7, potentially leading to a full product combination. This could enhance Devin's ability to handle multiple coding tasks simultaneously and introduce persistent memory across sessions.
