Cognition 为何收购 Poke：AI 个性正成为竞争优势

Poke——这款你可以像给朋友发消息一样聊天的 AI 助手——正在迈出下一大步。该助手背后的公司 The Interaction Company of California 已被 AI 编程创业公司 Cognition 收购，这笔交易对该创业公司的估值为“低九位数”美元。

该交易将把 Poke 的交互模型和人格特质带入 Cognition 的编程助手 Devin。与此同时，Cognition 表示，Poke 将利用 Cognition 的模型和基础设施，变得更快、更可靠。

Poke 吸引消费者——如今也吸引其收购方——的原因，在于它回应用户请求的方式。Poke 并不像一个工具那样运作，而是以更熟悉、亲切的方式与用户聊天，像朋友一样回应，甚至会在互动中融入俚语和幽默感。这种能力有望为 Devin 这款编程 Agent 增添价值。

The Interaction Company 联合创始人 Marvin von Hagen 在接受 TechCrunch 采访时解释道，并确认了交易价格：“如果你的同事有个性，而不只是一群机器人，你可能会更喜欢这样。即使你的同事也是软件工程师，他们也可以开个玩笑。你会觉得这很有趣，也很愉快。”

这项收购凸显出一种日益增长的观点：AI 助手如何与用户互动，其价值将与驱动它们的底层模型同样重要。Cognition 希望让 Devin 更不像软件，而更像一位同事。

Cognition 联合创始人 Scott Wu 在一篇博客文章中写道：“Interaction 团队打造了一款人们喜爱的 Agent：它很主动、了解你，而且与它聊天很有趣。这正是与 Devin 协作应有的感受，而现在我们可以一起打造它。”

他还指出，他本人以及 Cognition 联合创始人 Walden Yan 都曾是 Poke 背后公司的天使投资人。

Poke 于 2026 年 3 月首次推出，用户可以通过自己选择的消息平台与其 AI Agent 互动，包括 iMessage、SMS、Telegram，以及部分市场中的 WhatsApp。人们使用 Poke 完成多种任务，覆盖旅行、健康、金融、日程安排和教育等类别。

Von Hagen 表示，管理电子邮件、提醒事项和待办任务等生产力类工作，是 Poke 最常见的使用场景之一。

图片来源： Poke/The Interaction Company of California

Cognition 表示，过去三个月里，Poke 用户在该平台上交换了超过 1 亿条消息。不过，von Hagen 称，尽管 Poke 已被数十万人使用，其运行成本一直很高，因此难以实现盈利。

今年 6 月，Poke 成为首个获批准在 Apple Messages for Business 平台上运行的 AI Agent。该平台为企业在 Apple 的 Messages 应用内处理客户通信提供标准化体验。

据悉，至少到今年年底，Poke 不会立即发生变化。Poke 计划继续留在 Apple 平台上。

不过，明年团队将探索如何同时改进 Poke 和 Devin，其中 Poke 将在部分任务中采用 Cognition 最新的软件工程模型 SWE-1.7。两款产品也不排除会被完全整合。

von Hagen 表示：“我认为，从长期来看，Poke 可以在编排所有这些编程[任务]时变得更可靠……与此同时，Devin 也可以变得更像 Poke。比如现在，Devin 一次只能处理一个 PR——即 pull request（拉取请求）——我认为，让 Poke 编排不同的 Devin 会话有很大价值。”此外，Poke 还可以帮助 Devin 在不同会话之间记住任务。

他补充道：“拥有一位持续存在的同事会很好。”

Poke, the AI assistant you text like a friend, is making its next big move. The company behind the assistant, The Interaction Company of California, has been acquired by AI coding startup Cognition in a deal valuing the startup in the “low nine figures.”

The deal will bring Poke’s interaction model and personality to Cognition’s coding assistant Devin. Meanwhile, Poke will take advantage of Cognition’s models and infrastructure to become faster and more reliable, Cognition said.

What makes Poke interesting to consumers — and now, to its acquirer — is how it engages with users’ requests. Instead of functioning like a tool, Poke chats more familiarly with users, responding like a friend and even incorporating slang and humor into its interactions. That’s something that could add value to Devin’s coding agent.

“You probably prefer it if you have co-workers that have personality, rather than if you have co-workers that are just robots,” explained Interaction Company co-founder Marvin von Hagen in an interview with TechCrunch, where he also confirmed the deal’s price. “When you have co-workers that are also software engineers, they can also make a joke. And you’ll find it funny and enjoyable.”

The acquisition underscores a growing belief that how AI assistants interact with users will become just as valuable as the underlying models powering them. Cognition wants to make Devin feel less like software and more like a colleague.

“The Interaction team has built an agent that people love: it’s proactive, it knows you, and it’s fun to talk to. That’s exactly how working with Devin should feel, and now we get to build it together,” Cognition co-founder Scott Wu wrote in a blog post.

He also noted that he and Cognition co-founder Walden Yan had been angel investors in the company behind Poke.

First launched in March 2026, Poke allows users to engage with its AI agent through their messaging platform of choice, whether that’s iMessage, SMS, Telegram, or, in some markets, WhatsApp. People use Poke for a variety of tasks across categories like travel, health, finance, scheduling, and education.

Von Hagen noted that productivity tasks like managing emails, reminders, and to-dos were among Poke’s most common use cases.

Image Credits: Poke/The Interaction Company of California

Over the past three months, Poke users exchanged more than 100 million messages on the platform, Cognition said. But despite being used by hundreds of thousands of people, Poke had been expensive to run, making it difficult to turn a profit, von Hagen said.

In June, Poke became the first AI agent to be approved to run on Apple’s Messages for Business platform, which provides businesses with a standardized experience for handling their customer communications within Apple’s Messages app.

Going forward, nothing will immediately change for Poke through the end of the year, we’re told. Poke plans to remain on Apple’s platform.

However, next year the team will experiment with how both Poke and Devin can improve, with Poke turning to Cognition’s newest software engineering model SWE-1.7 for some tasks. Fully combining the two products has not been ruled out, either.

“I think in the long term Poke can be more reliable with orchestrating all these coding [tasks] … and, at the same time, Devin could become more like Poke,” von Hagen said. “Like right now, Devin can only do one PR — pull request — at a time … I think there’s a lot of value in having Poke orchestrate different Devin sessions.” Plus, Poke could help Devin remember tasks across different sessions.

“It would be good to have a persistent co-worker,” he added.