Trustap was founded in 2017 and has offices in Cork and Dublin, as well as the UK, the US, Spain and Croatia.

Irish payments and transactions start-up Trustap has raised $10m in funding to be used for product development and expansion of its team.

It will also facilitate the launch of Trustap Index, described by the Cork-based fintech company as “a solution designed to make marketplace or e-commerce listings fully transactable by AI agents”.

The service will “work with leading AI models to handle product discovery, negotiation and payment on a buyer’s behalf, with the human confirming each transaction before funds are released”, according to Trustap, to align with a growing shift towards delegation of online commerce from people to AI agents.

The index, which will launch in 2026 and has an open waitlist for early access, aims to close gaps in discoverability of products for shopping agents and help them make more informed buying decisions based on numerous shopping criteria across fragmented platforms through “structured data precision”.

“This funding gives us the runway to ensure that when an AI agent shops anywhere on the internet, it can find the listing, verify the seller and complete the payment securely through infrastructure it can rely on,” said Conor Lyden, Trustap’s founder and CEO.

“We’ve spent years building the transaction platform that make ecommerce, peer-to-peer and marketplace platforms safe, more profitable, and trustworthy for buyers and sellers. Trustap Index is the natural next step in that journey.”

The funding round was led by Aperture Capital, with participation from TX Ventures and other existing investors.

Ben Robinson, CEO of Aperture Capital, said: “The rise of agentic commerce is happening faster than many people realise. We believe that Trustap, which already works with hundreds of marketplaces providing secure end-to-end transaction management, is uniquely positioned to orchestrate agentic transactions.

“Trustap acts as a single, trusted aggregation point that indexes and transforms fragmented inventory data into consolidated machine-readable information.”

Trustap was founded in 2017 and has offices in Cork and Dublin, as well as the UK, the US, Spain and Croatia. It employs more than 40 people working with around 300 customers.

It raised $5.5m in a Series A funding round almost two years ago, and soon after became the first company invested in by the Digital Irish Venture Fund.

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What just happened? TP-Link continues to vehemently argue that it is a US, not Chinese, company. The Pentagon says otherwise, and so does US-based Netgear, which believes its rival makes false advertising claims and has cost it millions of dollars in lost sales because consumers wrongly think that it’s no longer associated with China.

Netgear has filed counterclaims against TP-Link in the US District Court for the District of Delaware, escalating a legal fight that TP-Link started last November.

The original lawsuit accused Netgear of running a smear campaign that connected TP-Link to Chinese cyberespionage fears and breached a 2024 settlement between the two router giants. Netgear’s response now says the real deception is TP-Link’s attempt to rebrand itself as an American company.

According to the counterclaim, TP-Link “remains, at its core, a Chinese company selling Chinese-made products.”

Netgear alleges that TP-Link’s 2024 reincorporation in California did not fundamentally separate the business from China-based TP-Link Technologies, which later changed its name to Lianzhou.

It claims much of the company’s R&D and manufacturing remains in China under the same cofounder, with more than 13,000 employees there through 2024, compared with around 350 in the US.

Netgear also takes aim at TP-Link’s “Made in Vietnam” labeling, alleging that the country is mostly used for final assembly and that 99.5% of components in US-bound products are imported from China.

It says those claims are important because customers are increasingly wary of Chinese-made networking hardware, especially after federal agencies began scrutinizing TP-Link over pricing, cybersecurity, and national security concerns.

Netgear’s filing arrived one day after the US Department of Defense added TP-Link Technologies to its list of Chinese military companies operating in the United States. The designation does not itself ban consumer sales, but it adds extra pressure as TP-Link tries to convince regulators that its US arm is independent.

TP-Link is already seeking an exemption from the FCC’s foreign-made router ban by arguing that TP-Link Systems Inc. is headquartered in Irvine, California, and should be treated as an American company.

The FCC rules block approval of new consumer routers made outside the US, though existing devices can keep receiving updates until 2029. Netgear and Amazon-owned Eero have already received exemptions.

This isn’t TP-Link’s only courtroom problem, either. Texas sued the company in February, accusing it of deceptive marketing and allowing China-linked hackers to access American consumers’ devices. TP-Link denied those allegations, insisting it is independent from the Chinese government and that US user data is stored in the United States.

Netgear is seeking damages and an injunction barring TP-Link from repeating the contested claims. TP-Link, meanwhile, maintains that Netgear’s China-focused attacks are false, defamatory, and commercially motivated.

Customers can order new joysticks, batteries, screens and more.

Apple barely talked about CarPlay at its WWDC 2026 keynote, giving most of the spotlight to Siri AI and the broader Apple Intelligence additions in iOS 27. But that doesn’t mean CarPlay is a no-show this year.

The Cupertino giant buried most of the CarPlay updates in a developer-only video, and, as it turns out, there’s genuinely more here than you would have expected. As a CarPlay user myself, I’d say some of these features are long overdue, while others tag along with the broader iOS 27 redesign.

So, without any further ado, let’s discuss everything new coming to your CarPlay dashboard this fall, with the stable iOS 27 release. 

Full video apps for when you’re parked

The most substantial update to CarPlay this year is support for video playback. Apple’s iOS 27 lets developers build video streaming apps for your car’s dashboard. CarPlay already got AirPlay video casting last year, but iOS 27 takes it a step further, letting you watch videos directly from supported apps.

Apple hasn’t confirmed the list of supported apps yet, but it might include names like YouTube and Netflix. The catch, however, is that you can only watch videos on your CarPlay screen when your car is parked. Further, the manufacturer has to specifically enable the feature, which is why I’m not expecting every car to get this on day one.

Audio scrubbing in Now Playing

This is the “how was this not already here” CarPlay update. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to jump to a specific part of a song using the horizontal audio bar on the CarPlay Now Playing screen, only to realize it doesn’t do anything.

With iOS 27, the Now Playing screen finally gets a real scrubber. Using the horizontal progress bar, you can drag and jump to any point in a song or podcast. If you’re the type who replays the same 10 seconds of a song on a loop, or skips podcast intros entirely, this one’s for you, no question.

A persistent audio MiniPlayer

Music and podcast apps will get a persistent MiniPlayer. It’s in the top-right corner of the CarPlay dashboard, offering basic playback controls along with the album art. 

You can simply glance over while checking the map for your exit, and you’ll actually know what’s playing and be able to skip it, without backing out of navigation first.

Better navigation heading and GPS accuracy

This is one of the quieter yet most important CarPlay updates Apple ships with iOS 27. The company is improving how the iPhone-mirroring system tracks your direction and position, refining both GPS accuracy and the heading detection (the direction your car is pointing in). 

I’ll admit that it’s not a flashy feature, but it should fix the occasional car icon spinning in circles at a stoplight glitch or navigation confidently rerouting you down a street you are not on. 

More reliable wireless CarPlay

Wireless CarPlay is all about convenience, and it works just fine, until it doesn’t, and that’s usually when I give up and switch to a wired connection. For anyone who’s dealt with mid-drive drops, unclear voice calls, or a dip in audio quality after hanging up, iOS 27 could be much-awaited fix.

Though Apple doesn’t explain the extent of the change, it says that wireless CarPlay connections are more reliable in iOS 27. 

New developer tools

iOS 27 adds new app templates across categories. It also gets support for Live Activities (introduced with iOS 16.1) and widgets from any app, so you could have a live sports score widget running on your CarPlay display without actually opening the app.

Developers also gain new APIs for building conversational voice apps, including AI chatbot integrations, into CarPlay. 

A subtle visual refresh

While the design language would remain the same, CarPlay gets a total of 14 new wallpapers in the same Celosia style, debuting across iOS 27 and macOS 27. Liquid Glass elements will reflect the transparency level you choose with the new iOS 27 slider, while app icons gain additional refractive layers that add depth and definition.

Siri AI finally comes to your car

On top of all that, CarPlay also gets Siri AI with iOS 27. For those catching up, it’s Apple’s long-delayed, Gemini-powered assistant that can handle natural follow-up questions the way Gemini does.

So, you should be able to ask for a restaurant, then ask what time it closes, without repeating the entire request. Siri AI also stores every conversation on your iPhone’s Siri app, with a small car icon indicating you asked the question while using CarPlay.

The catch, however, is that Siri AI for CarPlay requires an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. 

SpaceX went public this week in the largest IPO ever, making CEO Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.

Despite its name, SpaceX has been emphasizing the potential of its costly AI business, and competitors OpenAI and Anthropic may soon follow with their own public market debuts. So on the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed what’s looking like a hot IPO summer.

“We have SpaceX not only sucking up just a huge chunk of the money that’s available on public markets, but also really stress testing the limits of what a public company can be and how much it can be controlled by one single person,” Sean said. “My eye is really on these other tech companies that will go public and how much they will try to emulate.”

Kirsten also noted that there are other startups trying to “ride that SpaceX IPO wave,” for example by raising money for orbital data centers after SpaceX helped to popularize the concept.

“So there’s a ripple effect that’s happening throughout the market that I think is probably even more interesting than just the headline, ‘SpaceX makes Elon a trillionaire,’” she said.

Keep reading for a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Anthony Ha: I want to zoom out a little bit from just the SpaceX IPO, because beyond the Elon Musk of it all, it’s the beginning of what could be a [series] of different IPOs for different AI companies. We’ve talked about Anthropic confidentially filing to go public, and now OpenAI has done the same. How excited are either of you about this?

Kirsten Korosec: I want to start off by saying that I love Julie Bort’s story, which I think sums it up pretty nicely. It’s a great headline, so I’m gonna read it here: “It’s not FAANG anymore, it’s MANGOS.” FAANG being Facebook, which is now Meta; Amazon; Apple; Netflix; Google, now Alphabet. 

Now it’s shifted, and we’ve got Meta, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Google, OpenAI, SpaceX. [We’ve still got] massive tech companies, surely, but there is a shift here, right? First of all, we’ve got a bunch of AI labs in there, and that’s very different. Netflix gets booted out of there, a giant streaming service. And so to me, it’s an interesting shift in terms of public markets and the vast amount of money and capital available in the public markets shifting away from consumer [and] social networks and towards, specifically, AI labs and other, more innovative deeptech, such as SpaceX. 

So I think that’s the most interesting thing —  aside from the fact that this summer is going to keep us all very busy as reporters, more than probably any other summer in a while.

Sean O’Kane: You know, once upon a time I wanted to be a lawyer, and one of the reasons I didn’t was because I hated the paperwork that was going to be involved. And here I am looking forward to reading hundreds more pages of SEC filings this summer —  talk about a beach read.

It’s a moment we’ve been anticipating for a while. We’ve spent the last few years really wondering if the IPO market was going to quote-unquote “open back up” after a lot of consternation about private markets, and mockery about people reaching their like Series [whatever] fundraising round. This is a good stress test — I mean, “good,” take that word however you want — a good stress test of public markets in general. 

We have SpaceX not only sucking up just a huge chunk of the money that’s available on public markets, but also really stress testing the limits of what a public company can be and how much it can be controlled by one single person. My eye is really on these other tech companies that will go public and how much they will try to emulate.

A thing that I keep saying and thinking about with SpaceX is, they’re really trying to take some of the most extreme aspects of Google and Meta’s original IPOs back in the early 2000s and mashing it up with that “We’ll lose money forever” with Amazon. And I’m curious how much Anthropic and OpenAI will try to do the same. Will they remake themselves in the image of SpaceX? Or will they try to put themselves in a different light?

Anthony: One aspect that really got driven home as I was reading about the OpenAI IPO is also the extent to which some of this is also a bit of a race in terms of timing. I think we can confidently say at this point, SpaceX is first out the gate, which probably has some advantages and disadvantages. It’s also a bit of a different company because it’s billing itself as an AI company, but obviously has a bunch of other stuff going on, too. 

But there is a sense in which, at least according to some analysts, OpenAI and Anthropic may both want to go before the other one, because there’s only a finite amount of capital, a finite amount of interest. At some point some of these valuations have to start coming back down to Earth, and so they may both be scrambling to be first. 

Kirsten: I mean, there’s very much a race between Anthropic and OpenAI. You’re even seeing OpenAI talk about slashing prices, and they’re certainly going to be competing on the IPO calendar. But that is very short-term thinking. If they’re smart, they should be much more concerned about the long-term play here. 

To me, what’s really interesting is while Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX all prepare for these moments, there are a host of other companies out there that are raising money on the backs of the success of companies like SpaceX, or going into SPACs. Just today, for instance, or as we’re recording this, a company called Quantum Space is doing a SPAC and absolutely trying to ride that SpaceX IPO wave. 

We’ve got a host of other startups that our reporter Tim Ferholz has reported on that are clearly — they’re not going to go public, right? But if SpaceX is successful with space data centers, they’re raising money off of that potential and they’re building businesses on that potential. So there’s a ripple effect that’s happening throughout the market that I think is probably even more interesting than just the headline, “SpaceX makes Elon a trillionaire.”

Sean: The commonly accepted theory in Silicon Valley is that AI is remaking the economy, but because of its use. AI is actually already remaking the economy — just because of how people are trying to build it. We have everything that you just described, we have these other companies rushing to public markets. And I think that’s a really good point to think about: Will they ever regret rushing to public markets?

But we even have companies like Ford and General Motors who are pivoting their unused battery creation capacity to be energy providers for data centers. And Ford’s stock shot up when it announced what is honestly a pretty modest-looking energy storage business, in comparison to something like Tesla. And Tim De Chant had a really great series of stories this week about GM’s pivot, as well.

The economy’s already being remade. Whether that’s durable, again, that’s the question, but it’s happening right now.

Kirsten: That is actually a really good point, because to me, I want to say five, six, seven, eight years ago, there were all these headlines of “the next Tesla killer” and these automakers and other companies are still chasing trying to recreate all these various businesses, and specifically the strategies of Elon Musk-based businesses. They haven’t learned their lesson.

I wish I could communicate this to all the automaker CEOs out there: I get it that you have a lot of unused batteries and you want to pivot to something else, but trying to model your business after Tesla or SpaceX and others, it doesn’t always work. Perhaps look elsewhere.

Sean: So Ford shouldn’t get into space data centers. Is what you’re saying?

Kirsten: No, they shouldn’t. But just watch. This is going to happen.

OFFBEAT

L3Harris supplies system that can down incoming drones with laser-guided rockets

The US Army has awarded a contract to defense biz L3Harris for its Vampire counter-drone system to support an urgent requirement to protect against hostile airborne threats.

As drones continue to be a danger to ground forces, the Army’s order, worth up to $106 million, will form part of its layered defense approach against remotely operated and autonomous aerial vehicles.

The Vampire system is described by the firm as a completely self-contained platform that delivers a precision strike capability against drones and remotely piloted aircraft.

It can be fitted to vehicles, such as mounting on the back of a truck, and combines a telescopic mast with an electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) stabilized targeting system. It also has a launcher for a variety of what the military likes to call effectors – projectiles or missiles that typically go bang.

In the case of Vampire, this will often be the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS), comprising US-made Hydra 70 2.75-inch (70 mm) rockets with an added laser homing capability.

This seems to have become the (relatively) low-cost weapon of choice for downing certain types of drones, and is now being fitted to British Typhoon fighter jets deployed to the middle east, for example.

However, L3Harris says that Vampire has a modular plug-in design that allows for the rapid addition of other sensors, effectors, and radio management systems.

The system can engage aerial targets up to six kilometers (3.8 miles) away. Its laser designator can highlight targets, while also coordinating with other platforms, allowing for a distributed approach to target engagement.

“We’ve worked with the Army to understand their needs for new counter-UxS systems that can be quickly assembled, delivered, set-up and fired,” said L3Harris president, for Targeting & Sensor Systems, Tom Kirkland.

“Vampire is effective at hunting and engaging drone threats affordably, which enables US armed forces to sustain reliable defense of its personnel and infrastructure.”

We asked L3Harris how many systems the US Army will be getting for its $106 million.

The company says it developed Vampire at the beginning of the war in Ukraine to provide a low-cost solution to help eliminate Russian drone threats. It has since ramped up production at a new production line in Huntsville, Alabama, in a response to the growing need it sees from the US and allies to counter the drone threat. 

L3Harris says the system has so far logged more than 350,000 operational hours in support of European combat operations since 2023. ®

I work from home, so I typically listen to audio through headphones or AirPods. But I’ve always wanted a desk speaker that doesn’t take up too much space, which made the new Sonos Play a fitting first Sonos product to review.

The Play, launched in March, is Sonos’s first new device in more than a year. The $299 speaker is a hybrid: part home speaker, part portable. It sits on your desk in a pill-shaped dock, but at 1.3 kilograms, with a “utility loop” on the back, it’s easy to carry around the house or take outside.

While testing it, I often started a podcast at my desk and carried the Play to the kitchen while I cooked or made coffee. The advantage over wearing AirPods is that you remain aware of your surroundings — no more missing what someone across the room is saying. And you don’t need to rely on voice commands to control playback; the Sonos Assistant and Alexa are both built in.

Physical controls are another advantage. Skipping tracks or adjusting volume with greasy hands is awkward on AirPods; the Play’s buttons are more forgiving. That said, the controls themselves are easy to miss — they’re the same color as the silicone top and barely raised above the surface. After a few days I had memorized their positions, but the learning curve is a minor frustration that better contrast or more tactile buttons could have avoided.

The speaker is sturdy and IP67-rated, meaning it can handle rain and brief submersion — I ran it under a tap without issue. It can also charge your phone in a pinch, doubling as a power bank, which is a welcome feature for outdoor use.

For sound, the Play relies on dual-angled tweeters, a mid-woofer, and three digital amplifiers, with two passive radiators to reinforce bass outdoors. The result is balanced and detailed at moderate volumes — instrument separation is particularly good. The soundstage is narrow, though, meaning the music can feel somewhat contained rather than expansive, and at higher volumes the mix loses some of its clarity.

The Play is well-suited to a desk or a patio; it isn’t trying to fill a room. For that, Sonos’s Era 100 SL — which launched alongside the Play — is the better choice. Two Play units can be paired into a stereo configuration, either through the app or, more cleverly, by holding the play/pause button on both speakers simultaneously. It’s a useful feature that makes a noticeable difference for music, though less so for television audio — which these speakers aren’t really designed for anyway.

Sonos has also built in Trueplay, which uses the speaker’s microphones to automatically calibrate sound based on the room. Earlier versions of this feature required waving your phone around the space to tune the audio — an awkward workaround that would have made little sense on a portable speaker. The new implementation handles it automatically.

Sonos has had well-publicized struggles with its app — disappearing speakers, glitchy volume controls — and while the company has made meaningful improvements, a few rough edges remain. Sync between the Play and my MacBook was occasionally laggy, for example, and playing or pausing audio on YouTube sometimes produced a noticeable delay before the speaker responded.

Switching audio between speakers worked reliably through AirPlay but failed repeatedly in the Sonos app until I installed the Apple Music integration — and even then, the process is more cumbersome than it should be.

The “Apply” button in the Sonos app, required to confirm speaker changes, feels like an unnecessary extra step. AirPlay handles the same action with a single tap.

Pocket Casts integration has a resuming bug: podcasts restart from the beginning rather than picking up where you left off.

Overall, the Sonos Play is a solid speaker that largely delivers on its premise. The app issues are real but not dealbreakers, and Sonos has shown it is willing to iterate. If portability isn’t a priority, the Era 100 ($219) or Era 100 SL ($189) offer more volume for less money. If you want something more rugged and truly portable, the Sonos Roam 2 or JBL Charge 6 are worth considering. But if you want a speaker that works equally well on a desk and a back porch, the Play makes a convincing case for itself.

Computed Axial Lithographic printing gets even closer to the Star Trek replicator fantasy than any other 3D printer we’ve seen: there’s a machine, it glows with a mysterious bluish light, and an object appears. OK, the object is appearing inside a spinning vat of photochemical ooze, not in thin air, but that’s a detail. It’s still very cool tech, and now it’s open source enough to replicate with full documentation and a GitHub repository.

This project is descended from the same Berkeley research that we featured last year, but at that point, they were inviting everyone to join their Discord server, and that was about it. At the time, we put on our old man outfit to yell at clouds and say, “A Discord shouldn’t count as open source!” For once, it looks like those geriatric grumblings were heeded. There is still a corporate-hosted chat server named for a malignant goddess, and you’re still invited, but now there’s also actual, searchable documentation!

As with all CAL, there’s still the spinning vat of specially viscous photopolymer resin, and the light is provided by a NexiGo Nova Mini projector. There’s no FEP to worry about, and no stops and starts: the vat spins, the projector exposes the resin, and a part appears almost faster than can be believed, with spatial resolution like an older SLA

The instructions for putting that projector-based printer together look good; there are even instructions for mixing the special resin, though pay attention to the safety warnings in the “Don’t Try This At Home” banner. Apparently, they’re going to have FormLabs mix resin for those who cannot do it themselves, which seems like a valuable partnership for people who want to limit exposure to toxic ooze. Of course, that’s what a fume hood is for.