Poke: AI Agents, Just a Text Away

A new startup is introducing an innovative AI agent, Poke, designed to serve as a personal superintelligence accessible directly through popular messaging platforms like iMessage, SMS, Telegram, and, in select regions, WhatsApp. The concept aims to democratize the utility of advanced AI, making it as intuitive and pervasive as everyday communication.

Launched publicly in March, Poke empowers consumers with a personal assistant capable of executing tasks on their behalf via a familiar text-based interface. Its current capabilities are extensive, covering daily planning, calendar management, health and fitness tracking, smart home control, photo editing, and a multitude of other everyday needs, all managed through simple text messages.

Unlike general-purpose AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Claude, which are typically used for queries or research, Poke is engineered for action and automation. Users turn to Poke when they need to accomplish tasks swiftly or streamline routines to reclaim valuable time.

For instance, Poke can be instructed to provide alerts for specific emails, such as those from family or a manager, or to deliver morning reminders, like whether to bring an umbrella. It can assist in tracking health and fitness objectives, relay sports scores, send daily medication reminders, or summarize the day's news. A key feature is the ability for users to craft their own automations in plain text and subsequently share them with others.

The 10-person startup, backed by prominent investors including Spark Capital, General Catalyst, and various angel investors, recently secured an additional $10 million in funding. This new investment follows a $15 million seed round last year, bringing the company's post-money valuation to $300 million.

This personal superintelligence is now just a tap away, requiring no downloads or sign-ups. Users can simply text Poke for free to get started. The platform also introduces "Poke Recipes," allowing for quick creation of automations and offering opportunities to earn. Developers can also build with the npx tool.

The introduction of Poke aligns with a surge in demand for agentic AI systems, a trend underscored by OpenAI's acquisition of OpenClaw's creator and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's assertion that every company requires its own "OpenClaw strategy," coinciding with Nvidia's launch of an enterprise-grade alternative.

However, for individuals lacking technical expertise, the prospect of installing software via a terminal, managing dependencies, and troubleshooting errors associated with systems like OpenClaw can be daunting. Furthermore, such systems often raise security concerns due to their deep system access.

Consequently, agentic systems like OpenClaw have remained largely inaccessible to the general public. The team behind Poke is determined to change this narrative by making advanced AI actionable and approachable for everyone.

Marvin von Hagen, co-founder of The Interaction Company of California, the Palo Alto-based startup behind Poke, shared with TechCrunch that Poke's development was influenced by observing how beta testers interacted with the company's previous product, an AI email assistant launched approximately a year ago.

Von Hagen explained, "What we noticed there was that people wanted to use Poke for everything… Even though it was only meant for email, people started asking Poke to remind them to take their medication. They asked Poke about sports results — ‘Hey Poke, tell me every morning if I need a jacket or not.’ And at that time, we didn’t have a lot of this functionality, but we noticed how we needed to become general-purpose much more quickly, because people just like the personality and the humanness of it so much."

This feedback prompted the team to partially pivot, focusing on enhancing Poke's utility, proactiveness, and personable nature.

Getting started with Poke is remarkably straightforward, a stark contrast to more complex systems. Users simply visit Poke.com, click "Get Started," and input their phone number. There is no application to install, as the assistant operates entirely through text messaging.

Underpinning its functionality, Poke intelligently selects the most suitable AI model for each task, drawing from leading AI providers or leveraging open-source alternatives.

Von Hagen highlights this as a significant long-term advantage: "I think this is also one of our main strengths in the long run: that almost all of our competitors are just big tech and labs that are bound to a specific provider. Like Meta AI will only ever be able to use Meta models, and ChatGPT will only ever be able to use OpenAI models."

To enable its operation across platforms like iMessage, Poke utilizes Linq, a solution designed to integrate AI assistants directly into messaging applications. While it also supports SMS and Telegram, WhatsApp integration is currently restricted due to Meta's policy enacted last fall, which barred other general-purpose chatbots.

However, this situation may evolve. Antitrust investigations initiated by regulators in the EU, Italy, and Brazil against Meta's decision have already facilitated Poke's return to Brazil. There is optimism that these regulatory pressures will also enable Poke to operate on WhatsApp in the EU once Meta reduces its associated fees. Von Hagen characterizes Meta's current high fees as a form of "malicious compliance," anticipating that this issue will soon be addressed.

Upon launch, Poke offers a diverse array of "recipes"—pre-configured tools designed to automate various aspects of personal and professional life. These recipes span categories such as health and wellness, productivity, finance, scheduling, travel, home, school, email, community, and specialized developer tools. Installing them is as simple as a single click, followed by any necessary standard authorization processes.

These recipes are engineered to seamlessly integrate with popular existing applications and services like Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, Notion, Linear, and Granola. Health and fitness recipes are compatible with platforms such as Strava, Withings, Oura, and Fitbit, while smart home recipes work with devices from companies like Philips Hue and Sonos.

Developers using Poke can also automate parts of their workflow through integrations with essential tools including PostHog, Webflow, Supabase, Vercel, Devin, Sentry, GitHub, and Cursor Cloud Agents.

Poke's security framework is multi-layered, incorporating regular penetration testing, security audits, and various protective tools. Permissions for both AI agents and human employees are strictly limited. By default, the team cannot access user data within tokens, unless a user explicitly grants access to log files or analytics by enabling a specific setting.

In recent weeks, Poke users have collaboratively developed thousands of additional recipes and automations, which the company intends to incorporate into its public directory for broader discovery. To further encourage this creative ecosystem, Poke offers creators between 10 cents and a dollar (depending on geographical location) for every new user who signs up through their shared recipe.

The cost of using Poke is surprisingly accessible: it begins as a free service, with flexible pricing thereafter. During beta testing, users engaged in negotiations with the AI agent to determine their monthly subscription fee, which ranged from $10 to $30.

Von Hagen clarifies that current pricing is dynamically based on how the AI agent is utilized. Tasks that do not require real-time data can often be performed for free. However, costs are incurred for real-time inference, such as automations triggered by every incoming email or real-time flight check-ins. The company has provided Poke with guidelines on operational expenses, enabling it to offer personalized pricing to users.

While the company has successfully enhanced Poke's efficiency to reduce operational costs, von Hagen emphasizes that profitability is not the immediate objective.

He states, "We really don’t want to make money, but we really want to grow. We want to build a product for a billion people and monetization is really secondary. The goal for the next weeks and months now is to bring Poke into everyday life." To achieve this, the company plans to collaborate with creators and influencers to demonstrate diverse use cases for Poke.

An example of user innovation includes a "tastebuds" MCP server built on Poke Recipes to crowdsource food opinions. When a user seeks dining recommendations, Poke can suggest local food spots enjoyed by other users, storing their reviews discreetly in the background.

Co-founded by Felix Schlegel, the company has not disclosed specific customer numbers but reports a tenfold increase in sign-ups over the past couple of months. Poke also notably appeared at the top of Vercel’s AI Gateway leaderboard.

Beyond its primary institutional investors, Spark Capital and General Catalyst, the startup has attracted a distinguished roster of angel investors. These include John and Patrick Collison (Stripe founders), Jake and Logan Paul, Logan Kirlpatrick from DeepMind, Joanne Jang of OpenAI, and Scott Wu and Walden Yan (Cognition founders).

Further angel investors include Vercel co-founder Guillermo Rauch, PayPal co-founder Ken Howery, Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, Mercor co-founder Brendan Foody, Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf, Flapping Airplanes co-founder Ben Spector, among others.