Apple has approved AI agent startup Poke to access Apple's Messages for Business platform, making Poke the first independent third-party AI agent approved to run on the platform. Poke was developed by The Interaction Company of California in Palo Alto and launched in March this year with a team of about 10 people.
Users can send messages to Poke via SMS, Telegram, and WhatsApp (in some markets), and let it handle tasks such as daily planning, calendar management, health and fitness tracking, smart home control, and photo editing. As of the release of the report, Poke said it had processed approximately 100 million messages.
It is not an app, but an enterprise conversation portal
Apple's enterprise messaging service was originally aimed at airlines, retailers, hotels and other companies, allowing users to directly contact businesses through the iMessage interface to complete consultation, customer service, reservations and other operations. Automatic replies and live customer service can be switched in the same conversation interface.
After Poke was approved this time, it did not enter the iPhone as an ordinary App, but became an AI service account that users can talk to. For the average iPhone user, the short-term experience is more like "send a message to an AI contact" rather than being as deeply embedded in the system as Siri.
The significance of this entrance is the threshold. Poke is aimed at everyday users who don’t want to learn complex AI systems: send a sentence and let AI help arrange schedules, check health records, and control home devices. The usage is similar to texting.
Apple audits focus on real people and AI logos
Poke co-founder Marvin von Hagen said it took several months to get approval from Apple. Apple requires Poke to prove that it can provide human customer service support when necessary, and it must clearly indicate that the conversation partner is an AI agent, not a real person.
Poke also submitted certifications from messaging service providers and adapted the interface to Apple specifications. For example, in the iMessage version, links need to be displayed as link previews instead of ordinary inline links; buttons and other interface elements must also comply with Apple's style guide.
This set of requirements shows that Apple is not just looking at whether AI can answer questions, but whether it can operate in a controllable manner. Once AI starts to perform calendar, health, smart home and other operations for users, the boundaries of responsibility after errors will become more realistic: users must at least know that they are dealing with AI, and there must also be real-person customer service to ask questions.
Pay-per-user, Apple gets new platform revenue
Hagen revealed that Poke will pay Apple based on the number of users, but did not announce the specific price. He said the fee was significantly lower than the fees Meta charged for third-party AI agents on WhatsApp; TechCrunch also mentioned that Meta raised the fee after EU regulations required it to allow third-party AI agents to access WhatsApp.
For Apple, this may become a new platform revenue channel: AI agents that want to enter Apple-controlled message portals need to pass audits and bear distribution costs. For startups like Poke, entering a large platform can reach more users, but each additional user may also bring fixed costs, and the business model cannot only focus on growth rate.
Poke is still in the financing expansion stage. TechCrunch said the 10-person company completed a $15 million seed round last year, with investors including Spark Capital, General Catalyst and other angel investors; it recently added another $10 million in funding, with a post-investment valuation of about $300 million.
Released before WWDC, the signal still needs to be officially confirmed by Apple
The approval comes just days before Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). TechCrunch said that the market expects Apple to release an AI-optimized version of Siri at WWDC on Monday, June 8, as well as AI tools and services for application developers; there are also rumors that Apple may further open the App Store to AI agents.
The case of Poke cannot be directly equated to "Apple's full opening of AI agents." It accesses Apple's enterprise messaging service, not the App Store, nor system-level Siri. But it has given an observable threshold: if a third-party AI agent wants to enter Apple's user interface, it needs to accept Apple's identity, real-person support, interface specifications and charging rules.
For users, this change will not immediately change the core usage of the iPhone; for AI smartphone companies, Apple is turning "whether you can enter the entrance" into a set of auditable, chargeable, and controllable businesses.