Cognition Acquires Poke to Add Personality to Devin AI Coder

Cognition bets big on AI personality

Cognition has acquired The Interaction Company of California, maker of the Poke AI assistant, in a deal valued in the low nine figures. The acquisition aims to infuse Poke's distinctive conversational style into Devin, Cognition's AI coding assistant, while giving Poke access to more powerful infrastructure.

The transaction reflects an emerging conviction in the AI industry: how an assistant communicates may be as strategically important as the models underneath. Poke distinguished itself by texting users like a friend rather than responding like a traditional software tool, incorporating slang and humor into its exchanges.

"You probably prefer it if you have co-workers that have personality, rather than if you have co-workers that are just robots," Marvin von Hagen, co-founder of The Interaction Company, told TechCrunch, which first reported the deal. "When you have co-workers that are also software engineers, they can also make a joke. And you'll find it funny and enjoyable."

Why it matters

This acquisition marks a strategic pivot in enterprise AI development. As coding assistants become more capable, differentiation increasingly depends on user experience rather than raw technical performance alone. Cognition is betting that developers will prefer working with an AI that feels like a colleague instead of a command-line interface. If successful, this approach could reshape how companies design and position AI agents across professional workflows.

Poke's traction and challenges

Launched in March 2026, Poke operates across messaging platforms including iMessage, SMS, Telegram, and WhatsApp in select markets. Users have sent more than 100 million messages through the platform over the past three months alone, with hundreds of thousands of people using it for productivity tasks like email management, reminders, travel planning, and scheduling.

Despite this engagement, Poke faced profitability challenges due to high operational costs, von Hagen acknowledged. In June, Poke became the first AI agent approved for Apple's Messages for Business platform, which provides standardized customer communication tools within Apple's Messages app.

Integration roadmap

Poke will continue operating independently through the end of 2026, with no immediate changes for users. Starting in 2027, the team plans to experiment with cross-product improvements, including having Poke leverage Cognition's SWE-1.7 software engineering model for certain tasks.

Von Hagen outlined a vision where Poke could orchestrate multiple Devin coding sessions simultaneously, addressing current limitations where Devin handles only one pull request at a time. Poke's memory capabilities could also help Devin maintain context across different work sessions.

"It would be good to have a persistent co-worker," von Hagen said.

Cognition co-founder Scott Wu, who along with co-founder Walden Yan had previously invested in The Interaction Company as an angel investor, wrote that the acquisition would help make Devin "proactive, it knows you, and it's fun to talk to."

The companies have not ruled out fully combining the two products in the future.

Details of the acquisition were first reported by TechCrunch.