Cognition, the AI coding startup behind the software agent Devin, has acquired Poke, the AI assistant you can text like a friend. According to TechCrunch's Sarah Perez, the deal values Poke's parent company in the "low nine figures" — meaning somewhere in the low hundreds of millions of dollars.
Poke's appeal is less about raw capability and more about feel. Rather than making you log into a dedicated app, it lives inside the messaging services people already use, and it talks back in a casual, conversational style. TechCrunch describes it simply as "the AI assistant you text like a friend."
That personality is exactly what Cognition appears to be buying. According to TechCrunch, the acquisition brings Poke's conversational style and interaction model to Devin, Cognition's coding agent. The framing from TechCrunch is pointed: AI personality, it argues, "is becoming a competitive advantage."
The reasoning behind that is worth unpacking. As AI assistants from different companies converge on similar underlying abilities, the way a tool speaks to you — its tone, its manners, how naturally you can reach it — becomes a real differentiator. A coding agent that feels approachable and communicates well may win users over one that is equally smart but stiff.
Both TechCrunch and the aggregator Techmeme note Poke's defining trait: users access it through messaging services rather than a standalone product, lowering the friction of actually using it.
Why it matters: the deal is a concrete signal that the AI industry's competition is shifting from what these assistants can do toward how they make you feel while doing it — with personality itself now carrying a low-nine-figure price tag.