Top AI Product

Apple’s Messages for Business has always been a channel for companies — airlines, hotels, retailers — to talk to their own customers. Poke just became the first AI agent approved to live there. The startup’s pitch is simple: let everyday people use an AI agent through plain text messages, no app, no command line, no agentic dashboard.

## What Poke does

Poke handles the small stuff people actually want help with over text — daily planning, calendar, fitness tracking, photo editing, web searches, image generation, setting up automations, even checking you in for domestic flights or tracking flight deals. It connects to services like Gmail, Outlook, GitHub, Strava, and Navan, and can control Philips Hue lights and Sonos speakers. The whole interface is the message thread.

## Why it matters

Most AI agents still assume a technical user and a dedicated surface. Poke’s bet is that the most universal interface — a text message — is where consumer agents will actually win, and Apple opening Messages for Business to a third-party agent is a notable first. The 10-person startup is now valued at $300 million, which says how much weight investors put on owning that channel.