Increasingly, startups are offering AI agents that users can reach via SMS or messaging apps instead of installing another dedicated app. These agents keep conversational context, connect to existing services like email and calendars, and can perform tasks such as scheduling, planning trips, sending emails, making reservations, shopping, or setting reminders for future dates.
Key players and services
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Caddy: an assistant available in iMessage on iPhone and RCS on Android that turns scattered phone information into actionable items. It connects to calendars and conversations to detect items requiring action, add events, set reminders, track follow-ups, and perform research. Caddy has been in public beta since April 2026.
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Fambot: positioned as a family “chief of staff,” it aggregates school communications, sports schedules, meal planning and calendars, and turns them into organized plans. Fambot works via app and SMS on iOS, Android and the web; it sends nightly summaries with the next day’s events and to-dos, and parents can reply to adjust plans. It currently connects to Gmail and Google Calendar, with Outlook and Apple Calendar support planned. The company launched in beta in early September 2026 and raised $3.5 million in pre-seed funding. The service is free during beta, with a planned later subscription roughly comparable to a Netflix price.
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Folk: reachable through iMessage, WhatsApp and Telegram, Folk remembers personal context, handles reminders, researches topics, tracks flights, manages email and makes real-world reservations. Folk runs on its own private cloud compute and can run code and execute multi-step tasks. Folk launched beta in May 2026; it is available for free, with a Pro subscription at $8.33/month for unlimited background tasks.
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Instinct: one of the best-known and highest-valued players. After an initial raise that valued it at $2.5 billion, Instinct raised $1 billion in September 2026, bringing its valuation to $10 billion. Instinct can act on users’ behalf rather than only answer questions; users communicate via text or voice and connect the agent to email, calendars, Google Workspace and more. Early users have used Instinct for trip planning, grocery shopping, booking tickets and cancelling subscriptions. In September 2026, Instinct began issuing dedicated email addresses for users’ assistants so the agent can create and manage accounts and contact businesses without cluttering the user’s personal inbox—an autonomy that has raised privacy and security concerns. The company is in private beta and has started rolling out support for placing calls.
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Iris: powered by the Hermes agent, Iris lets users delegate tasks directly through iMessage. Users connect their apps, hand over a task by message, and the agent retains relevant context and follows up proactively.
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Martin: a general-purpose assistant reachable over SMS, phone, WhatsApp, email, Slack and via its iOS app. It manages calendars, email, reminders, tasks, notes and communications, and can send messages or place calls on behalf of users while providing daily summaries. Subscriptions start at $21/month.
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Miso: a travel-focused assistant on iMessage that pairs AI trip planning with support from a dedicated human travel team. Miso factors in travel preferences and loyalty programs, enables flight arrangements via messaging, and provides trip details and personalized recommendations.
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Ohai: another family assistant that converts messages, forwarded emails and voice requests into schedules, reminders and plans, coordinating calendars, chores and meals across household members. It offers a free basic tier and paid plans that start at $9.99/month depending on family size.
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Ollie: aims to centralize school messages, calendars, task lists and group chats for families and deliver relevant information by text. Ollie’s notable distinction is achieving SOC 2 compliance, a widely used security standard. Launched in June 2026, Ollie has a free tier and paid plans starting at $25/month for 150 messages; $100/month includes up to 1,000 messages.
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Orbits: a household-focused assistant available via the Orbits app and text messages that combines calendars, lists and conversations and can search the web, make purchases, book restaurants, change appointments and request quotes for home services. Orbits can remind family members about chores and coordinate responsibilities beyond the immediate household. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Speedrun fund, N49P and Garage Capital.
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Pally: acts like a friend while connecting to services such as WhatsApp, Gmail, calendars and Google Drive to track plans, receipts, dates, files and other details. There is a free plan (including 15 minutes of calls per month) and paid plans, including $25/month for 30 minutes of calls and $100/month for 60 minutes.
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Poke: launched in March 2026 as a general-purpose text-accessible assistant that handles calendars, planning, health and fitness, smart-home controls, photos and everyday tasks. Poke gained attention in June 2026 when Apple approved it as the first AI agent on the Apple Messages for Business platform. In July 2026, parent company The Interaction Company of California was acquired by AI coding startup Cognition in a transaction described as being in the low nine-figure range.
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Rene: a text-first personal assistant available on iMessage, Telegram and WhatsApp that turns natural-language conversations into tasks, reminders and summaries. Rene also includes a browser, code-writing capabilities, shopping, and tools for creating slides and images.
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Skye (Signull Labs): an “agentic homescreen” for iPhone that analyzes connected services and surfaces relevant information via contextual cards, suggestions and daily briefings. Signull Labs raised about $3.6 million in seed funding in 2025; Skye entered private testing and beta in April 2026 and has not announced a public release date.
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Stanley: a content-focused assistant for creators available through iMessage, Telegram and the web. Stanley helps generate ideas, turn voice notes into scripts and captions, maintain a content calendar and schedule posts to make content production more continuous and automated.
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Tomo: a personal assistant for iMessage that can participate in group conversations and helps with goals, accountability, scheduling and daily organization. It can send reminders, search the web, work with calendars and email, watch videos and edit photos. The basic plan starts at $19.99/month.
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Town: targeted at professional workflows, Town provides a “Townie” assistant that learns how a user works and handles recurring professional tasks across email, calendars, documents and Slack. In June 2026 Town raised $55 million in a Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz and Forerunner.
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Wajo / Fo: Wajo’s consumer agent Fo can call businesses, send emails, join group chats, make bookings and purchases and coordinate with people to complete everyday tasks. A core aspect of Fo’s design is giving the agent its own identity—its own email address, phone number and payment card—so it can interact with businesses without exposing users’ credentials. When Fo cannot finish a task autonomously, Wajo says it can bring in a human assistant. Fo launched publicly in September 2025 with a free tier; higher workloads and custom agents are available via a paid Pro offering.
Why this matters
Text-accessible AI agents lower the friction for delegating routine tasks by keeping interactions inside channels people already use. The market spans family organization, travel concierge services, professional assistants and creator tools, and business models range from free betas to subscription tiers. At the same time, features like autonomous agent email addresses, cloud-based execution and broad service permissions raise privacy and security questions that companies and regulators will need to address as these services scale.
Overall, SMS- and messaging-based AI agents are maturing rapidly and diversifying: some focus on consolidating household information, others on travel, content creation or workplace productivity, and several have secured significant funding or reached compliance milestones such as SOC 2.
