Poke Makes Ai Agents As Easy As Sending A Text

Is Poke an OpenClaw for nan remainder of us? That’s nan thought coming from a caller startup offering an AI supplier that you tin entree via iMessage, SMS, Telegram, and, successful immoderate markets, WhatsApp.

The AI supplier Poke launched publically successful March, allowing consumers to entree a individual adjunct that tin return action connected their behalf done a acquainted interface. Today, Poke tin thief pinch mundane needs, for illustration regular planning, managing your calendar, search your wellness and fitness, controlling your smart home, editing your photos, and more, each via matter message.

Image Credits:Poke/The Interaction Company of California

While you whitethorn still interact pinch a general-purpose AI chatbot for illustration ChatGPT aliases Claude erstwhile you person questions aliases want to do research, you’d move to Poke erstwhile you want to get thing done quickly, aliases erstwhile you want to automate immoderate task to prevention you time.

For instance, you could inquire Poke to alert you to circumstantial emails (like those from your family aliases your boss), aliases punctual you successful nan greeting if you request to return an umbrella pinch you. It could thief you way your wellness and fittingness goals, aliases fto you cognize nan people to past night’s game. Poke could nonstop regular medicine reminders, aliases drawback you up connected nan day’s news, and more, since users tin constitute their ain automations successful plain matter and past stock them pinch friends.

Backed by Spark Capital, General Catalyst, and different angels, nan 10-person startup has much precocious added different $10 cardinal to its coffers, connected apical of past year’s $15 cardinal seed round. It’s now weighted astatine $300 million, post-money.

The instrumentality arrives arsenic request for agentic AI systems is spiking, starring OpenAI to snap up OpenClaw’s creator, and Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang to pass that every institution needs its ain OpenClaw strategy erstwhile announcing Nvidia’s enterprise-grade alternative.

But for those little technically inclined, nan imaginable of having to instal package done nan terminal, negociate dependencies, and troubleshoot errors is daunting. Plus, systems for illustration OpenClaw raise information concerns owed to its heavy strategy access.

For galore people, then, OpenClaw and different agentic systems still consciousness retired of reach. The squad down Poke wants to alteration that.

Image Credits:Poke/The Interaction Company of California

Marvin von Hagen, co-founder of The Interaction Company of California, nan Palo Alto-based startup down nan caller AI agent, tells TechCrunch that Poke emerged from watching really beta testers were utilizing nan company’s earlier product, an AI adjunct for email, built astir a twelvemonth ago.

“What we noticed location was that group wanted to usage Poke for everything… Even though it was only meant for email, group started asking Poke to punctual them to return their medication. They asked Poke astir sports results — ‘Hey Poke, show maine each greeting if I request a overgarment aliases not,’” explains von Hagen. “And astatine that time, we didn’t person a batch of this functionality, but we noticed really we needed to go general-purpose overmuch much quickly, because group conscionable for illustration nan characteristic and nan humanness of it truthful much.”

The squad past partially pivoted and focused connected making Poke much useful, proactive, and much personable.

Unlike OpenClaw, getting started pinch Poke is easy. You simply sojourn Poke.com, click “Get Started,” and participate your telephone number. There’s nary app to instal arsenic nan adjunct operates complete matter messaging.

Image Credits:Poke/The Interaction Company of California

Under nan hood, Poke turns to nan AI exemplary that champion fits nan task, whether that’s a exemplary from 1 of nan large AI providers aliases an unfastened root model.

“I deliberation this is besides 1 of our main strengths successful nan agelong run: that almost each of our competitors are conscionable large tech and labs that are bound to a circumstantial provider. Like Meta AI will only ever beryllium capable to usage Meta models, and ChatGPT will only ever beryllium capable to usage OpenAI models,” von Hagen points out.

To activity complete messaging platforms for illustration iMessage, Poke besides leverages Linq, a solution that enables AI assistants to unrecorded wrong messaging apps. The app tin tally done SMS and Telegram, too, but WhatsApp support is presently constricted arsenic Meta barred different general-purpose chatbots past fall.

That could change, however. Regulators from nan EU, Italy, and Brazil opened antitrust probes to conflict this decision, which has brought Poke backmost to Brazil. It will hopefully besides let Poke to activity connected WhatsApp successful nan EU erstwhile Meta brings nan costs down. (Meta has seen pushback complete nan precocious fees it’s charging — von Hagen says it’s a shape of “malicious compliance” that he believes will soon beryllium addressed.)

Image Credits:Poke/The Interaction Company of California

At launch, Poke offers a assortment of “recipes” — aliases pre-made devices that thief you automate various aspects of your life aliases work. These span categories for illustration wellness and wellness, productivity, finance, scheduling, travel, home, school, email, community, and, for those who are technical, developer tools. Installing them requires a click of a fastener and past a modular authorization process, if needed.

These recipes are designed to activity pinch apps and services you already know, for illustration Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, Notion, Linear, Granola, and others. There are wellness and fittingness “recipes” that activity pinch Strava, Withings, Oura, Fitbit, and more, arsenic good arsenic those that activity pinch smart location devices from companies for illustration Philips Hue and Sonos.

Developers utilizing Poke tin besides automate parts of their workflow via integrations pinch devices for illustration PostHog, Webflow, Supabase, Vercel, Devin, Sentry, GitHub, Cursor Cloud Agents, and others.

Poke’s information exemplary is multi-layered and includes regular penetration testing, information checks, various tools, and limiting permissions for some agents and quality employees. By default, nan squad can’t spot thing wrong nan tokens, unless nan personification manually opts to supply entree to a log record aliases analytics by flipping a move successful their settings to opt to stock this information. (TechCrunch has not performed its ain information audit, to beryllium clear.)

Image Credits:Poke screenshot/TechCrunch

Over nan past mates of weeks, Poke’s users person created thousands much recipes and automations, which nan institution plans to adhd to its recipes directory for find successful nan adjacent future. It’s besides encouraging creators to build these shareable recipes by offering to salary location betwixt 10 cents and a dollar (based connected geography) for each personification who signs up for Poke via nan recipe.

Image Credits:Poke.com screenshot/TechCrunch

Image Credits:Poke.com screenshot/TechCrunch (opens successful a caller window)

The costs to usage Poke is amazingly affordable: it’s free to start, past pricing is flexible. During nan beta tests, users really had to discuss pinch nan AI supplier what value they’d salary per month, which ranged betwixt $10-$30 — aliases truthful Poke told america successful consequence to this question.

Von Hagen says that, now, pricing is based connected really nan AI supplier is being used. If you’re asking for things that don’t require real-time data, you could astir apt usage Poke for free. What costs Poke money is real-time inference, for illustration automations that tally connected each incoming email aliases real-time formation check-ins. To group prices, nan institution gave Poke guidance connected really costly things are, which allows it to find personalized pricing.

While nan institution has managed to make Poke much businesslike to trim costs, nan extremity correct now isn’t profitability, von Hagen notes.

Image Credits:Poke screenshot/TechCrunch

“We really don’t want to make money, but we really want to grow. We want to build a merchandise for a cardinal group and monetization is really secondary,” he says. “The extremity for nan adjacent weeks and months now is to bring Poke into mundane life.” To do so, it will look to creators and influencers to showcase really they’re utilizing Poke.

The company, co-founded by Felix Schlegel, isn’t sharing really galore customers person signed up, beyond noting that nan fig has 10x’ed complete nan past mates of months. (However, we did spot Poke astatine nan apical of Vercel’s AI Gateway leaderboard for immoderate that’s worth.)

In summation to its main organization investors, Spark Capital and General Catalyst, nan startup has attracted nan attraction of a number of angels, including 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).

It besides included 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, and respective others.