Cognition, the AI coding startup behind the Devin coding agent, has acquired Poke, the AI assistant known for its conversational, personality-rich interactions, in a deal valuing the startup in the low nine figures.

Poke engages users through text messaging platforms like iMessage, SMS, Telegram, and WhatsApp, responding with slang, humor, and a friend-like tone.

Cognition plans to bring Poke‘s interaction model to Devin to make the coding agent feel more like a colleague.

“You probably prefer it if you have co-workers that have personality,” said Poke co-founder Marvin von Hagen.

The acquisition reflects a growing industry belief that how AI assistants interact with users is becoming as valuable as the underlying models.

Poke has been used for tasks across travel, health, finance, scheduling, and education, with over 100 million messages exchanged in the past three months.

However, Poke had been expensive to run, making profitability challenging. In June, Poke became the first AI agent approved on Apple’s Messages for Business platform.

Going forward, nothing changes for Poke through the end of 2024. Next year, the team will experiment with merging capabilities: Poke may use Cognition‘s latest software engineering model SWE-1.

7, and there is potential for Poke to orchestrate multiple Devin sessions and maintain persistent memory across tasks. The full combination of the two products has not been ruled out.