Cognition Buys Poke to Make Devin Feel Human
Cognition paid a low nine-figure sum for texting assistant Poke, its second acquisition in a year, betting that how an AI agent talks matters as much as what it can do.
Daniel Okafor
AI Industry & Policy Reporter
Daniel is a tech reporter who covers the business side of artificial intelligence - funding rounds, corporate strategy, regulatory battles, and the power dynamics between the labs racing to build frontier models. Before joining Awesome Agents, he spent four years at Reuters covering the intersection of technology and finance, with a particular focus on how venture capital shapes the AI industry.
He holds a degree in Economics from the London School of Economics and a postgraduate diploma in Journalism from City, University of London. His economics training shows in his reporting: he follows the money, reads the filings, and is skeptical of growth narratives that do not come with numbers attached.
At Awesome Agents, Daniel covers AI industry news with an emphasis on deals, policy, competition, and market dynamics. He is especially interested in the geopolitics of AI - export controls, chip restrictions, and the US-China-EU regulatory landscape. His reporting tends to focus on who benefits, who pays, and what the incentives actually are.
Based in London, UK.
Articles by Daniel Okafor
Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta Tell Trump: Don't Ban Open AI
Twenty-five companies signed an open letter urging the White House not to restrict Chinese open-weight AI models, using Jensen Huang's first-ever X post to deliver it.
Etched Doubles to $10.3B Before Shipping a Chip
Etched raised $300M at a $10.3B valuation, doubling its price tag in seven months, even though its transformer-only Sohu chip has yet to ship in volume.
Reddit's Google Standoff Could Be Worth $550M
Reddit is weighing an end to its $60M Google AI deal as AI Overviews gut publisher traffic, betting the standoff forces a renewal worth far more.
Kalanick's Atoms Raises $1.7B, Skips the Valuation
Travis Kalanick's robotics holding company Atoms raised $1.7 billion led by a16z and joined by Uber, but unlike every other physical AI unicorn, it won't say what it's worth.
Microsoft Bets on AMD's Helios to Crack Nvidia's Grip
Microsoft will deploy AMD's new Helios AI racks across Azure, joining Meta, Oracle and OpenAI as flagship customers in a direct challenge to Nvidia's 95% grip on the data center GPU market.
Trump's AI Safety Agency Loses Its Third Boss in a Year
Chris Fall resigned as CAISI director after three months, the third AI policy leadership departure since March, while the agency built to test frontier models sits outside the White House's new Gold Eagle cyber program.
Apple Retakes Crown From Nvidia as AI Bets Shift
Apple closed at $4.88 trillion on July 17, ending Nvidia's 15-month reign as the world's most valuable company, as Wall Street rotates from AI infrastructure toward consumer distribution.
General Compute's $400M Loan Bypasses Nvidia GPUs
General Compute borrowed $400 million from Upper90 against a fleet of SambaNova SN50 inference chips, the first major AI infrastructure loan not collateralized by Nvidia hardware.
China's WAICO and America's Pax Silica Split AI World
Beijing's new World AI Cooperation Organization signed up 29 nations in Shanghai, weeks after Washington's rival Pax Silica bloc grew to roughly two dozen. Kazakhstan joined both.
Kimi K3 Tops Frontend Arena Just as Its Price Triples
Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 jumped 17 spots to #1 on LMArena's Frontend Code Arena, but the win comes with a tripled price tag and a weaker showing on broader intelligence benchmarks.
Elorian's $300M Joins AI's No-Product Funding Club
Ex-Google DeepMind researcher Andrew Dai raised $55M at a $300M valuation for Elorian, a visual AI lab with no product yet, joining a growing list of frontier labs priced on pedigree alone.
