Poke.com launches iMessage AI assistant with $15M seed funding at $100M valuation, used by 6,000 VC insiders

AI assistants have been popping up everywhere, but most live in standalone apps that force users into yet another interface. A new startup called Poke is betting the future of digital help should live where conversations already happen: inside iMessage.

Today, the Palo Alto-based startup emerged from stealth with $15 million in seed funding at a $100 million valuation. The round was led by General Catalyst, with backing from Village Global, Earlybird VC, and a group of angel investors that includes founders and executives from Stripe, Dropbox, Google, and OpenAI.

Current AI assistants often feel disconnected. They don’t have access to the emails, receipts, or calendar changes that drive real-world decisions. That gap leaves users doing manual work anyway—copy-pasting between apps, chasing reminders, or missing important deadlines hidden in cluttered inboxes. Poke wants to close that gap by sitting inside the chat app people already open dozens of times a day.

iMessage: An assistant that feels like texting a friend

Instead of juggling logins and new apps, Poke runs as a single iMessage thread. It connects with email, calendars, and files, and then takes action: paying invoices, rescheduling meetings, booking flights, or drafting replies. Every interaction looks like a short text bubble, keeping the experience light and conversational.

“Users don’t want another app. They want to text an AI the same way they text their partner, friends, parents, and colleagues,” said Marvin von Hagen, co-founder and CEO of Interaction, the company behind Poke. “Poke is the first to provide this experience done right. Short messages, one tap, pay the invoice, move the flight, reschedule the meeting, built with privacy-first.”

The product has already seen early traction. Over the past four months, 6,000 Silicon Valley insiders have sent 200,000 messages per month to Poke, stress-testing its ability to keep up with busy professional lives.

Founders with a track record

POke was founded by Marvin von Hagen (23) and Felix Schlegel (25). The duo first made headlines after leading a 65-person student engineering team that built a 12-meter, 22-ton tunneling machine to win Elon Musk’s 2021 Not-a-Boring Competition. Both founders also held research and engineering roles at Tesla, Apple, Stanford, and MIT before launching Interaction, their new consumer AI lab.

Investors are buying into their vision. “Sometimes you discover a user experience that feels like uncovering a hidden secret,” said Yuri Sagalov, Managing Director at General Catalyst. “Marvin and Felix did just that. The experience of interacting with Poke over iMessage and WhatsApp is magical. It’s like having your best assistant be with you in the interface you already use every single day.”

What’s next for Poke

Poke is now open for sign-ups at Poke.com, where anyone can request access. The company says its infrastructure meets SOC2 and CASA Tier 2 standards, signaling that privacy and security are part of its pitch to users who want help with sensitive tasks like payments and scheduling.

For now, Poke is betting that slipping into the most familiar chat app on your phone is enough to make people rethink what an assistant should be.