Poke makes AI agents as easy as sending a text

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

The AI cause Poke launched publically successful March, allowing consumers to entree a idiosyncratic adjunct that tin instrumentality enactment connected their behalf done a acquainted interface. Today, Poke tin assistance with mundane needs, similar regular planning, managing your calendar, tracking your wellness and fitness, controlling your astute home, editing your photos, and more, each via substance message.

Image Credits:Poke/The Interaction Company of California

While you whitethorn inactive interact with a general-purpose AI chatbot similar ChatGPT oregon Claude erstwhile you person questions oregon privation to bash research, you’d crook to Poke erstwhile you privation to get thing done quickly, oregon erstwhile you privation to automate immoderate task to prevention you time.

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

Backed by Spark Capital, General Catalyst, and different angels, the 10-person startup has much precocious added different $10 cardinal to its coffers, connected apical of past year’s $15 cardinal effect round. It’s present valued 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, the imaginable of having to instal bundle done the terminal, negociate dependencies, and troubleshoot errors is daunting. Plus, systems similar OpenClaw rise information concerns owed to its heavy strategy access.

For galore people, then, OpenClaw and different agentic systems inactive 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, the Palo Alto-based startup down the caller AI agent, tells TechCrunch that Poke emerged from watching however beta testers were utilizing the company’s earlier product, an AI adjunct for email, built astir a twelvemonth ago.

“What we noticed determination was that radical wanted to usage Poke for everything… Even though it was lone meant for email, radical started asking Poke to punctual them to instrumentality their medication. They asked Poke astir sports results — ‘Hey Poke, archer maine each greeting if I request a overgarment oregon not,’” explains von Hagen. “And astatine that time, we didn’t person a batch of this functionality, but we noticed however we needed to go general-purpose overmuch much quickly, due to the fact that radical conscionable similar the property and the 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 with Poke is easy. You simply sojourn Poke.com, click “Get Started,” and participate your telephone number. There’s nary app to instal arsenic the adjunct operates implicit substance messaging.

Image Credits:Poke/The Interaction Company of California

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

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

To enactment implicit messaging platforms similar 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 enactment is presently constricted arsenic Meta barred different general-purpose chatbots past fall.

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

Image Credits:Poke/The Interaction Company of California

At launch, Poke offers a assortment of “recipes” — oregon pre-made tools that assistance you automate assorted aspects of your beingness oregon work. These span categories similar 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 enactment with apps and services you already know, similar Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, Notion, Linear, Granola, and others. There are wellness and fittingness “recipes” that enactment with Strava, Withings, Oura, Fitbit, and more, arsenic good arsenic those that enactment with astute location devices from companies similar Philips Hue and Sonos.

Developers utilizing Poke tin besides automate parts of their workflow via integrations with tools similar 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, assorted tools, and limiting permissions for some agents and quality employees. By default, the squad can’t spot thing wrong the tokens, unless the idiosyncratic manually opts to supply entree to a log record oregon analytics by flipping a power 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 the past mates of weeks, Poke’s users person created thousands much recipes and automations, which the institution plans to adhd to its recipes directory for find successful the adjacent future. It’s besides encouraging creators to physique these shareable recipes by offering to wage determination betwixt 10 cents and a dollar (based connected geography) for each idiosyncratic who signs up for Poke via the recipe.

Image Credits:Poke.com screenshot/TechCrunch

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

The outgo to usage Poke is amazingly affordable: it’s escaped to start, past pricing is flexible. During the beta tests, users really had to negociate with the AI cause what terms they’d wage per month, which ranged betwixt $10-$30 — oregon truthful Poke told america successful effect to this question.

Von Hagen says that, now, pricing is based connected however the AI cause is being used. If you’re asking for things that don’t necessitate real-time data, you could astir apt usage Poke for free. What costs Poke wealth is real-time inference, similar automations that tally connected each incoming email oregon real-time formation check-ins. To acceptable prices, the institution gave Poke guidance connected however costly things are, which allows it to find personalized pricing.

While the institution has managed to marque Poke much businesslike to trim costs, the extremity close present isn’t profitability, von Hagen notes.

Image Credits:Poke screenshot/TechCrunch

“We truly don’t privation to marque money, but we truly privation to grow. We privation to physique a merchandise for a cardinal radical and monetization is truly secondary,” helium says. “The extremity for the adjacent weeks and months present is to bring Poke into mundane life.” To bash so, it volition look to creators and influencers to showcase however they’re utilizing Poke.

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

In summation to its main organization investors, Spark Capital and General Catalyst, the startup has attracted the attraction of a fig 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.