Cognition announced on July 23, 2026, that it acquired The Interaction Company of California, the developer of the AI assistant Poke. Multiple outlets reported that the deal was valued in the low nine figures. The acquisition is intended to bring Poke's more conversational interaction style to Cognition's coding assistant, Devin, while giving Poke access to Cognition's models and infrastructure.
The aim is a more human coding partner. Poke is designed to interact through familiar messaging channels and use humor, slang, and personal context. Cognition wants to apply that approach to Devin so the coding assistant feels more like a proactive teammate and less like a cold software interface. For developers, the potential benefit is a smoother workflow with less friction between tasks.
Poke's scale helps explain the acquisition. Cognition said Poke has relayed about 100 million messages in recent months, a company-reported figure that indicates substantial use of the assistant. Poke launched in March 2026 and is available through platforms including iMessage, SMS, Telegram, and, in some markets, WhatsApp. Its common uses include managing email, reminders, and to-do lists, along with travel, health, finance, scheduling, and education tasks.
The product is still expensive to run. Poke co-founder Marvin von Hagen said the cost of operating the assistant had made profitability difficult. The acquisition gives the team access to Cognition's infrastructure as it works to make Poke faster and more reliable. In June, Poke also became the first third-party AI agent approved to run on Apple's Messages for Business platform, which gives businesses a standardized way to manage customer communications in Apple's Messages app.
1. Devin may feel more like a colleague. Cognition co-founder Scott Wu said The Interaction Company's agent is proactive, remembers users, and is enjoyable to talk to. The planned integration could bring more of those qualities to Devin, including a conversational style that makes long coding sessions feel less isolated. The goal is not simply to add jokes. It is to make the assistant's responses and follow-up feel more natural while developers work.
2. Poke may coordinate more coding work. The teams have discussed using Poke to orchestrate multiple Devin sessions. In plain terms, that could let an assistant help organize several coding tasks instead of handling only one pull request at a time. This remains a longer-term possibility, not a confirmed feature or release schedule.
3. Memory could carry work across sessions. Von Hagen also described the value of a persistent co-worker that can remember tasks between separate interactions. That could reduce the need to repeat context when a developer returns to unfinished work. Cognition has not confirmed when this capability will be available to users.
What changes now. Cognition said there would be no immediate change to Poke through the end of 2026, and the service is expected to remain on Apple's platform during that period. The companies said they plan to experiment with ways for Poke and Devin to improve in 2027, including using Cognition's SWE-1.7 software engineering model for some Poke tasks. The timing, availability, and user access for these experiments remain unconfirmed.
If you use Devin today, you should not expect an immediate redesign. The meaningful change to watch for is whether future updates make the assistant better at remembering context, coordinating work, and communicating like a supportive teammate. For now, you can continue using Devin as it is while Cognition develops that more personable approach.
