Poke is OpenClaw for normies, $136,000 for billionaires
CEO Marvin von Hagen joined us this week on the podcast. Also: Anthropic employees aren't selling, OpenAI brags about GPUs, and Alex Wang had a good day.
This later-than-normal send brought to you by horrible United WiFi. Starlink’s full rollout can’t come soon enough.
“There is no ceiling”
Poke is a proactive, OpenClaw-style personal assistant that lives entirely inside your text messages. It feels more like texting a friend than prompting a chatbot. After a multi-month private beta period, Poke was made available to anyone last month.
It’s a fascinating product in many ways (I’ve been trying it and am impressed), including its pricing approach. What it charges is determined by how you use the product and what it thinks it’s worth to you. The most extreme example so far: a billionaire was quoted $136,000 a month. He paid it.
Poke is on the trajectory that every major lab is now racing toward: AI that is proactive and connected to everything. CEO Marvin von Hagen joined this week’s episode of ACCESS, the podcast I co-host with Ellis Hamburger.
Marvin confirmed that Poke raised a new $10 million round of financing from Spark Capital on top of its $15 million seed from General Catalyst and angels like the Collison brothers. The 10-person team is based in Palo Alto and operates under the corporate name The Interaction Company of California.
Three things that stood out from the conversation with Marvin:
