Cognition, maker of the Devin coding agent, acquires personal SMS assistant Poke

Cognition, the startup behind the autonomous software-engineering agent Devin, said on July 23 it has acquired The Interaction Company of California, the maker of Poke, a personal AI agent that operates inside text messages. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The deal joins two bets on “always-on cloud agents” that had aimed at opposite users: Devin for enterprise software engineering, and Poke for everyday personal tasks. Cognition co-founder Scott Wu and Interaction had been early backers of each other’s companies, the company said.

Poke runs inside SMS and Apple Messages, proactively texting users and following up on their requests. Cognition describes it as the only AI agent natively approved to run directly in Apple Messages. Users exchanged more than 100 million messages with Poke over the prior three months, according to Cognition.

Cognition says Poke’s product and user experience will stay unchanged in the near term, while its own models and infrastructure are used to improve the assistant’s speed and reliability. The pitch is that the underlying agent technology transfers across the coding and consumer contexts even when the interfaces do not.

The details rest largely on Cognition’s own announcement. No major technology-press coverage of the acquisition had surfaced, the price is undisclosed, and the 100-million-message figure is the company’s own and not independently verified.

The strategic question is whether an enterprise-focused company can run a consumer messaging product without letting it stall. Poke’s engagement numbers and its unusual Apple Messages access are the assets; keeping them intact through the integration is the test.