# Cognition Acquires Poke to Shape Devin's Interaction Design > Source: > Published: 2026-07-30 16:41:52+00:00 # Cognition Acquires Poke to Shape Devin's Interaction Design Cognition announced on July 23 that it acquired The Interaction Company, maker of texting-based assistant Poke, and plans to bring Poke's proactive conversational design into coding agent Devin. Cognition said users exchanged more than 100 million Poke messages in the prior three months; TechCrunch reported that the deal valued the company in the low nine figures. Cognition announced on July 23 that it acquired The Interaction Company of California, maker of the texting-based AI assistant Poke. The company said it wants to bring Poke's proactive conversational behavior into Devin, its software-engineering agent. Cognition did not disclose financial terms in its announcement. TechCrunch reported that the transaction valued The Interaction Company in the **low nine figures**, citing co-founder Marvin von Hagen, who confirmed the price to the publication. ### What Cognition is buying Poke is designed to interact through familiar messaging channels rather than a standalone chat window. Cognition said users exchanged more than **100 million messages** with Poke during the three months before the acquisition and described the product as being used by hundreds of thousands of people. The official announcement emphasized Poke's ability to initiate messages, follow up, and retain a conversational style. TechCrunch reported that Poke launched in March 2026 and was expensive to operate despite its usage, making profitability difficult. The publication also reported that Poke became the first AI agent approved to run on Apple's Messages for Business platform in June. Cognition co-founders Scott Wu and Walden Yan had invested in The Interaction Company before the acquisition. That relationship is relevant context for the deal, but neither the announcement nor TechCrunch's report disclosed the transaction's cash, stock, or retention terms. ### Integration remains a product plan Cognition said Poke would continue operating without immediate changes and that its models and infrastructure would be used to make Poke faster and more reliable. TechCrunch reported that Poke would remain on Apple's platform through the end of 2026 and that the teams planned experiments in 2027, including possible use of Cognition's SWE-1.7 model for some tasks. The proposed benefit for Devin is an interaction layer that feels more persistent and proactive. For an engineering agent, that could affect how tasks are initiated, remembered across sessions, and coordinated across multiple work streams. Those are product-design goals rather than demonstrated technical results. The available disclosures do not provide an integration architecture, evaluation results, data-retention changes, or a release date for a combined Poke-Devin experience. Teams assessing the acquisition should therefore separate the confirmed transaction and usage figures from Cognition's longer-term product ambitions. ## Key Points - 1Cognition acquired The Interaction Company after Poke recorded more than 100 million user messages over three months, according to the company. - 2TechCrunch reported a low-nine-figure valuation, while Cognition's public announcement did not disclose financial terms. - 3The planned Poke-Devin integration focuses on proactive, persistent interaction, but no combined architecture, evaluation result, or release date has been disclosed. ## Scoring Rationale The acquisition is a notable product and interaction-design development for AI agent builders because Cognition plans to apply Poke's messaging behavior to Devin. The companies have not disclosed integration architecture, evaluation results, or a combined-product release date, limiting the immediate technical impact. ## Sources Primary source and supporting public references used for this report. Practice interview problems based on real data 1,625 SQL & Python problems across 15 industry datasets — the exact type of data you work with. [Try 250 free problems](/problems)