Apple has approved Poke as the first third-party AI agent on its Messages for Business platform, opening iMessage to a standalone consumer AI service for the first time. The Palo Alto startup behind Poke, The Interaction Company of California, will pay Apple on a per-user basis to operate inside the iMessage interface. Poke has already relayed 100 million messages since launching in March 2026 across SMS, Telegram, and WhatsApp, and iMessage now joins that list.
Messages for Business was built for airlines, retailers, hotel chains, and similar companies to talk to their own customers through iMessage, with a standardized interface that supports automated chat and live human handoff. Until today, it had not been opened to a general-purpose AI agent that consumers themselves opt into. Poke users ask the agent to handle daily planning, calendar management, health and fitness tracking, smart-home control, and photo editing, all via text. The product is pitched at users who do not want to deal with command-line tools or more developer-oriented agentic systems.
The economics are the most interesting part of the deal for the rest of the agent market. Apple charges Poke per user on the platform, creating a fresh distribution toll for AI agent startups and a new line item for Apple's services business. Marvin von Hagen, co-founder of The Interaction Company, would not name the price but said it is significantly lower than the fees Meta AI started charging after EU regulation forced WhatsApp to permit third-party agents. Applied at scale, a per-user fee on every consumer-facing AI agent that wants iMessage reach becomes meaningful Apple revenue.
Key facts
- 01Poke is the first standalone AI agent approved on Apple's Messages for Business, previously reserved for airlines, retailers, and hotel chains.
- 02The 10-person Interaction Company of California will pay Apple per user, at rates Poke says are well below Meta AI's WhatsApp fees.
- 03Poke has relayed 100 million messages since launching in March 2026 over SMS, Telegram, and WhatsApp.
- 04Spark Capital and General Catalyst backed a fresh $10M extension on top of last year's $15M seed, valuing Poke at $300M post-money.
- 05Apple's approval process took a couple of months and required live-support fallback, agent identification, and UI changes like link previews.
Von Hagen frames Apple's posture as a recognition that messaging, not a separate app, is the natural surface for consumer AI.
Approval was not a rubber stamp. Apple required Poke to demonstrate it could escalate to live support when needed, to clearly identify itself as an AI agent, and to submit testimonies from its messaging providers. Poke also had to rework its UI to Apple's style guide, swapping inline links for link previews and adopting Apple's button and interface conventions. Von Hagen said the bar will apply to anyone else that wants in.
That timeline matters for competing agent startups eyeing the same channel — every rival faces the same multi-month review before a single iMessage thread opens.
Poke's launch on Messages for Business lands four days before Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 4, 2026, where Apple is expected to introduce an AI-rebuilt Siri and additional developer tools. AI Chat Daily reported last week that Apple is preparing a Gemini-powered Siri overhaul for the keynote. Reports have also suggested Apple could open its App Store to AI agents, though Poke's deal is a different mechanism — distribution inside iMessage rather than a storefront listing.
Being first, von Hagen said, came down to brand fit as much as engineering. He emphasized that many consumer products today chase growth through questionable tactics, and that Poke's pitch to Apple leaned on quality and trust signals rather than aggressive acquisition mechanics.
The funding picture matches the small-team, high-leverage shape of the company. Backed by Spark Capital, General Catalyst, and angels, the 10-person Interaction Company recently added $10 million on top of last year's $15 million seed round, valuing the company at $300 million post-money. Poke is now rolling out invites to existing users to optionally migrate to the iMessage experience.
The open question is how broadly Apple intends to extend this. Von Hagen said he is not briefed on Apple's WWDC plans, and Apple was not immediately available for comment. If Apple uses the keynote to formalize a broader AI-agent program on Messages for Business, Poke's months-long approval slog becomes a template; if it doesn't, Poke holds a temporary moat on the most-used messaging surface in the United States.
The structural story here is that Apple just found a way to monetize the AI boom without shipping a competitive frontier model. A per-user toll on third-party agents inside iMessage is recurring, scales with each partner's growth, and sits on infrastructure Apple already operates. For agent startups, iMessage distribution is genuinely valuable — but the cost of acquiring a user now includes an Apple line item, and that changes the unit economics of every consumer AI product that wants to live where people actually text.
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