Cognition acquires Poke to add a friendlier chat style to Devin

In short: Cognition has acquired Poke in a deal valued in the low nine figures, and it plans to bring Poke’s friend-like texting style to its coding assistant, Devin.

What happened

Cognition, a startup that builds an AI tool for writing and managing software code, has bought The Interaction Company of California, the company behind Poke. The deal values Poke in the “low nine figures,” which means a bit over $100 million.

Poke is an AI assistant designed to feel like texting a friend. People can message it through iMessage, SMS, Telegram, and in some places WhatsApp. Cognition said users sent more than 100 million messages on Poke over the past three months.

Cognition says the acquisition will help Devin, its coding agent, feel less like software and more like a colleague. (A “coding agent” is an AI helper that can take on programming tasks, like drafting changes and suggesting fixes.) Poke will also use Cognition’s models and infrastructure so it can be faster and more reliable.

Poke will not change immediately through the end of this year, according to the companies. Next year, the teams plan to experiment with deeper connections between Poke and Devin, including using Cognition’s SWE-1.7 software engineering model for some tasks. They also said a full merge of the products is possible.

Why it matters

As more AI assistants offer similar core abilities, companies are paying more attention to how these tools talk and behave. It is like choosing between two customer service lines that can solve the same problem, but one feels clearer and more pleasant to deal with. For everyday users, this could mean AI tools that remember context better and feel more natural to use, especially for ongoing work.

Source: TechCrunch AI