Poke
Acquiredpoke.com
The first independent third-party agent approved on Apple Messages for Business
Poke is an AI agent you reach on iMessage, WhatsApp and Telegram. To start, create an account. It messages you first rather than waiting to be asked.
At a glance
| Channels | |
|---|---|
| How you start | Create an account |
| Who starts it | Messages you first |
| Is there an app | Optional app An app exists but is not how you start |
| Categories | Personal assistants |
| Can do | Email,Calendar and scheduling,Reminders,Travel,Web research,Task management |
| Connects to | Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, GitHub, Strava, Navan, Oura, Philips Hue, Sonos |
| Pricing | Free tier; Pro $19/month; Ultra $199/month |
| Number type | Apple Messages for Business |
| Contact number | Unknown |
| First message, pre-written | None published |
| Runs on | Linq (on Linq's customer logo wall for the iMessage API) (source) |
| Browses with | Not disclosed |
| Number carrier | Unknown |
| Status | Acquired |
Who is behind it
| Company | The Interaction Company of California, acquired by Cognition |
|---|---|
| Founders | Marvin von Hagen |
| Based in | Unknown |
| Funding | $25M total, $300M post-money |
| Investors | Cognition founders (angels) |
| Traction | Hundreds of thousands of users and 100M+ messages in the three months before the acquisition |
Data and policy
| Trains on your conversations | Yes, with opt-out“Improve and customize our products and services...including to train our artificial intelligence models. Data from users who select Maximum Privacy will not be used for model training” |
|---|---|
| Data of people who never signed up | Addressed“We may receive personal data from our other customers. For example, a customer's email inbox may contain your contact information.” |
| If you cancel | Not stated in the policy |
| Model providers named | None named |
| Jurisdiction | Not stated in the policy |
| Availability | Not stated |
Read from the published policy on 2026-09-06. Quotes are verbatim. We report what the document says and link it; we do not interpret its legal effect, and policies change.
How it works
Poke launched in March 2026 from a ten-person team in Palo Alto and reached hundreds of thousands of users and over 100 million messages, at roughly $1.4M ARR.
Its significance to anyone building on this channel is regulatory rather than technical: it was the first independent third-party AI agent approved on Apple's Messages for Business, a programme that is otherwise invite-only and closed to new partners. It was acquired by Cognition in a low nine-figure deal four months after launch, with Cognition's founders having been angel investors.
Source: poke.com, checked 2026-09-06. How we source this.