Cauldron Ferm has an unlikely origin story, as startups go. Its core technology can be traced back to the 1960s, or maybe the 1970s. The exact start is a bit hazy, actually. What is known is that David and Polly McLennan had a dream of feeding the world using protein grown from microbes.
The pair knew they needed to improve the process, which was pricy and time consuming. Most fermentation happens in batches. Picture a brewery or a vineyard. Ingredients go in and the microbes work for a while, but then the process stops when it’s time to take out the finished product. It works for alcohol because booze commands a premium price. Food, though? That needs to be cheaper.
Still, the McLennans stuck with it, starting a small business that would over the course of 40 years refine their approach to continuous fermentation, which turns microbes into assembly lines capable of cranking out products uninterrupted.
“We didn’t know what we had,” Michele Stansfied, co-founder and CEO of Cauldron Ferm, told TechCrunch. But eventually, Stansfield who arrived at the McLennans’ company in 2012, realized they had more than initially thought.
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“We didn’t understand the challenge of continuous fermentation for synthetic biology,” Stansfield said. But when she did, she sought to transform the company from a small fee-for-service operators to a fast-moving startup. “At that point, I raised a seed round and acquired the IP, physical, and business assets.”
Cauldron has now raised $13.25 million in a Series A2 round that was led by Main Sequence Ventures with participation from Horizons Ventures, NGS Super, and SOSV, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. It had previously raised $6.5 million in 2024. Cauldron plans to use the funding to “increase the technology moat,” Stansfield said.
The company calls it’s technology “hyper fermentation,” which helps keep microbes in their maximally productive state. It can work in existing batch fermenters with a few modifications to the facility to accommodate the process. Cauldron’s customers bring their own microbes and strains, and the startup works to tweak their growing conditions, including nutrients, to keep them humming.
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Currently, Cauldron is focused on producing fats and proteins, including whey protein, “a product that can just slip into supply chains,” Stansfield said, though she adds there are more products the company has its eyes on.
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“Sixty percent of all inputs to global economy can be produced from biology,” she said. “Food was where we started, but now we’re starting to really diversify.”
— There’s more shake-up within Microsoft’s gaming unit as Lori Wright announced she is leaving “in the coming weeks.” Wright spent nine years at Microsoft, most recently leading global partnerships and business development and marketing for Xbox.
“I leave with overwhelming gratitude for the adventure of a lifetime. As for what comes next, I’m hoping for a lot of beautiful sunrises and sunsets, and discovering what lies in the space in between,” Wright said on LinkedIn.
Wright’s departure follows news last week that Haiyan Zhang is leaving Microsoft for Netflix. Zhang spent more than 13 years at Microsoft, holding positions across Microsoft Gaming, Microsoft Research and Xbox Studios, most recently as general manager and partner for Gaming AI.
Xbox is now led by Asha Sharma, the new CEO of Microsoft Gaming who recently took over from longtime leader Phil Spencer.
Luke Tavis (left) and Tai-Hong Fung. (LinkedIn Photos)
— Luke Tavis, chief accounting officer of Seattle-based remittance company Remitly, is retiring later this month.
He’ll continue to serve as a vice president until June to support an orderly transition, according to a regulatory filing.
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Tai-Hong Fung, currently VP, Controller, will replace Tavis on April 1. Fung joined Remitly in February after a long career at Starbucks and Microsoft.
Remitly co-founder and longtime CEO Matt Oppenheimer stepped down last month. The company is now led by veteran tech and finance executive Sebastian Gunningham. Oppenheimer remains as chairman.
Rajeev Rajan. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Rajeev Rajan, CTO at Atlassian, posted about his departure from the enterprise software giant. GeekWire previously reported about Rajan stepping down earlier this month, citing a regulatory filing from Atlassian, which also announced it was laying off 10% of its staff.
“I’m incredibly proud of what the team has accomplished — scaling our engineering organization globally, strengthening our platform foundations, and delivering products that power teamwork for millions of teams around the world,” Rajan wrote.
Rajan spent nearly four years at the collaboration software company. He was previously a VP of engineering at Meta and led the the company’s Pacific Northwest engineering hub. He also spent more than two decades at Microsoft in various leadership roles.
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“As for my next chapter, I’m excited by the current technology landscape – especially with the rapid acceleration of AI – and the opportunities it presents. Stay tuned for more on my next move!” he wrote on LinkedIn.
Brian Goldfarb. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Brian Goldfarb joined cybersecurity company SentinelOne as executive vice president and chief marketing officer. Goldfarb, who is based in Seattle, was most recently CMO at SolarWinds, the Texas-based IT infrastructure company.
Goldfarb was also CMO at cybersecurity company Tenable, and previously led marketing efforts at Amperity, Chef Software and Splunk.
“Returning to cybersecurity feels energizing,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “It’s a category I care deeply about. It’s mission-driven, fast-moving, and increasingly important. And what makes this moment especially compelling is where the market is headed: toward AI-native, AI-ready platforms that can help security teams move faster, operate smarter, and stay ahead of an increasingly complex threat landscape.”
— Thomas Pfenning, a corporate vice president at Microsoft who joined the company in 1995, announced his retirement in a LinkedIn post that cited his early work on MSN and the Windows 2000 networking stack. More recently he helped develop the Azure Edge suite. “Even the long hours — including those late-night CRI sessions — are memories I’ll keep, primarily because of the camaraderie and the spirit of the people I was working with,” he wrote.
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Cynara Lilly. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Cynara Lilly, a former executive director of advocacy and communications at The Ballmer Group, took a new role at Silicon Valley startup Hippocratic AI as chief communications officer. “This is the kind of role you dream about — sitting at the intersection of breakthrough technology, public policy, and a mission that could genuinely improve and extend lives around the world,” Lilly wrote on LinkedIn.
— Seattle recruiting tech startup Provn named Taylor Brazelton as its new CTO and co-founder. Brazelton previously was a senior software engineer at Microsoft, where he worked with Provn CEO Nikesh Parekh. Provn launched in November. “Taylor was and is always out in front and now I get to learn from him everyday!” Parekh wrote on LinkedIn.
— Vishnu Nath, vice president and GM at Microsoft, announced his departure after nearly 15 years at the Redmond tech giant leading groups working on Microsoft OneNote and Copilot Notebooks. “Microsoft has been more than a workplace for me — it’s been a place where I’ve grown as a leader, taken risks, learned from failures, and celebrated some of the most meaningful wins of my career,” he said on LinkedIn. Nath said “more to come” on his next step.
— Alexandra Holien is interim CEO at Ada Developers Academy, a Seattle-based nonprofit that trains under-represented people in tech. Holien, a 10-year veteran of Ada who has been interim CEO previously, replaces Tina-Marie Gulley, who is departing this week after two years as CEO. “Ada Developers Academy is stepping boldly into its next chapter, laser-focused on building the best technologists the industry has ever seen,” Laura Ruderman, CEO at Technology Alliance and an Ada board member, wrote on LinkedIn.
— Scott Ruffin, former CEO of e-commerce startup Pandion, announced he’s leading a new company called Kupu that describes itself as a patient financial protection platform in the healthcare sector.
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— Diana (Lustenader) Cappello joined Seattle AI role-play startup Yoodli as director of solutions engineering. Cappello will work remotely and was previously a director at Eightfold.
— Jesse Rebello is now managing director at Seattle-based energy efficiency company Edo. Rebello was a longtime exec at ENGIE Impact.
The order effectively halts the entry of nearly all future Wi-Fi and wired routers, as the vast majority are produced abroad. Products that have already received FCC authorization can continue to be sold and imported, and existing consumer equipment remains unaffected. However, for router makers planning to release new products… Read Entire Article Source link
Tony Siu, founder of Coffee & Code Philadelphia and an AI engineer and community builder, aims to advance a model of ecosystem development that blends human connection with the thoughtful use of AI. His approach reflects a community-first, servitude-leadership philosophy where participation, shared learning, and developer advocacy evolve alongside scalable systems, offering insight into how modern tech ecosystems can grow with intention.
Coffee & Code Philadelphia reflects how these dynamics take shape locally. From informal coding sessions, it has grown into a collaborative network where developers, designers, and founders gather to build, learn, and exchange ideas. Weekly meetups, technical workshops, and community-driven events create an environment where knowledge flows organically. Siu says, “I’ve noticed that spending time building alongside others often leads to conversations that happen naturally, and those moments can open the door to ideas that don’t always come up when working alone.”
This growth aligns with a bottom-up approach to leadership. Instead of directing outcomes, Siu focuses on enabling others to contribute based on their strengths. Participation becomes self-directed, and collaboration develops through shared interest. Such an approach reframes developer relations as a form of leadership.
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“I see developer advocates as connectors who help bridge technical teams and the broader community,” Siu remarks. “By being present and engaged, we help create space for mentorship, experimentation, and shared learning, which can support both individual growth and the adoption of new technologies.”
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AI plays a supporting role in enabling this scale. Within the community, AI systems assist with operational processes such as event coordination, sponsorship management, and reporting. These tools allow a small organizing group to sustain a growing ecosystem while maintaining consistency. Siu says, “AI can extend how much a team is able to manage, especially in coordination. The interactions between people, though, are where most of the value continues to develop.”
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As communities expand, maintaining authenticity becomes an ongoing consideration. Growth introduces new dynamics, from varied communication styles to broader participation. In-person interaction continues to play a key role in sustaining connection, as collaborative problem-solving and shared experiences deepen engagement. Siu says, “Scaling introduces complexity, and part of the process involves finding ways to keep interactions meaningful as more people become involved.”
Coffee & Code’s recent initiative showed how this balance can extend to larger settings. According to Siu, the Philly Startup Expo at Pennovation Works brought together a wide mix of founders, builders, and community members, with participants from other major tech hubs, as well as traveling in from abroad. “What struck me most innovative is definitely not the pitches, the startups, or even the heavyweight panel. It’s the creativity and resourcefulness of the tech startups resembling the grit, innovation and entrepreneurship of the founding fathers”, he says. Partnering with OneSixOne Ventures, Coffee & Code hosted and held a panel featuring UE Ventures, alongside others, the event featured hands-on demos across AI, spatial computing, and emerging software, and the involvement of startup teams added depth to the conversations. Throughout the expo, Siu notes that there was a clear sense of Philadelphia’s growing momentum as a technology hub.
For Siu, Philadelphia represents both opportunity and personal connection. His experiences across different learning environments shaped his appreciation for accessible, community-driven spaces. This philosophy also informs his guidance for emerging developers. He encourages building in public: sharing work and ideas early as they evolve. “When you share your work, even in its early stages, you create more opportunities to learn through interaction,” Siu explains. Participation in this way can open pathways for feedback, collaboration, and connection within the broader ecosystem.
Epic Games is cutting more than 1,000 jobs as usage of its flagship title, Fortnite, falls. “The layoffs aren’t related to AI,” CEO Tim Sweeney noted. Reuters reports: The cuts, along with more than $500 million in savings from lower contracting and marketing spending and unfilled roles would put the company in “a more stable place,” Sweeney said in a note to employees. […]
“We’ve had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic,” Sweeney said, adding “market conditions today are the most extreme” since the early days of the company founded in 1991.
The move marks Epic’s second major round of layoffs in three years. In September 2023, the company cut about 830 jobs, or roughly 16% of its workforce. It was not immediately clear what percentage of staff would be impacted by Tuesday’s announcement.
The live music discovery platform Bandsintown’s partnership with Apple goes , but iOS 26.4 brings the deepest integration between the two companies to date. Concert listings from Bandsintown will now appear in , allowing you to find out when either a band you already love, or one you’re discovering for the first time, is next playing live.
Artists who use Bandsintown to advertise their tour dates can promote upcoming shows in a number of ways through Apple’s app. A new Concerts tab will live within Search, allowing subscribers to search for shows by their genre, location and date, while participating artists can also connect their Bandsintown dashboard to their Apple Music artist page. By doing this, their tour dates will automatically appear in an “Upcoming Concerts” section within 48 hours of connecting the two services.
Apple Music users can tap listed events to see more details about a show and will be able to buy tickets through direct links to sellers. If you follow artists, you can also set up push notifications for their announced shows.
Bandsintown’s platform is already built into a number of other Apple apps and services, with the likes of Shazam, Apple Maps, Photos and Spotlight Search all able to pull through live event data. The new Apple Music features will be available on devices running iOS 26.4 when it leaves beta.
iOS and iPadOS 26.4 are here, with a surprising number of new features for a point release. Chief among them is a new AI playlist generator, similar to one Spotify launched in 2024.
Playlist Playground is Apple’s branding for the song list generator. It works as you’d expect: Type a prompt, and it spits out tracks that match it. As MacRumorsnoted, your prompts can relate to mood, feelings, activities and more.
Also new in iOS 26.4, an ambient music widget puts background sounds on your home screen. Like the corresponding Control Center tool, it brings up (Apple-curated) sounds for sleep, chill, productivity or well-being. Yet another music feature is Bandsintown integration: upcoming concert dates in your area will appear in the Apple Music app.
Unicode’s latest emoji characters arrive in the update, too. This includes “Hairy Creature,” also known as Bigfoot. Another fun one is fight cloud. (Think old-timey cartoons beating each other up inside a puff of vapor.) Also onboard are a trombone, a treasure chest, a distorted face, an apple core, an orca, ballet dancers and a landslide.
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The update also has fixes for some of iOS 26’s nagging bugs. In Apple’s latest attempt to stem the tide of complaints about Liquid Glass, there’s a new “Reduce Bright Effects” setting. There’s also a fix for a keyboard bug that caused errors when typing rapidly.
Engineers building browser agents today face a choice between closed APIs they cannot inspect and open-weight frameworks with no trained model underneath them. Ai2 is now offering a third option.
The Seattle-based nonprofit behind the open-source OLMo language models and Molmo vision-language family today is releasing MolmoWeb, an open-weight visual web agent available in 4 billion and 8 billion parameter sizes.
Until now, no open-weight visual web agent shipped with the training data and pipeline needed to audit or reproduce it. MolmoWeb does.
MolmoWebMix, the accompanying dataset, includes 30,000 human task trajectories across more than 1,100 websites, 590,000 individual subtask demonstrations and 2.2 million screenshot question-answer pairs — which Ai2 describes as the largest publicly released collection of human web-task execution ever assembled.
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“Can you go from just passively understanding images, describing them and captioning them, to actually making them take action in some environment?” Tanmay Gupta, senior research scientist at Ai2, told VentureBeat. “That is exactly what MolmoWeb is.”
How it works: It sees what you see
MolmoWeb operates entirely from browser screenshots. It does not parse HTML or rely on accessibility tree representations of a page. At each step it receives a task instruction, the current screenshot, a text log of previous actions and the current URL and page title. It produces a natural-language thought describing its reasoning, then executes the next browser action — clicking at screen coordinates, typing text, scrolling, navigating to a URL or switching tabs.
The model is browser-agnostic. It requires only a screenshot, which means it runs against local Chrome, Safari or a hosted browser service. The hosted demo uses Browserbase, a cloud browser infrastructure startup.
The dataset that makes it work
The model weights are only part of what Ai2 is releasing. MolmoWebMix, the accompanying training dataset, is the core differentiator from every other open-weight agent available today.
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“The data basically looks like a sequence of screenshots and actions paired with instructions for what the intent behind that sequence of screenshots was,” Gupta said.
MolmoWebMix combines three components.
Human demonstrations. Human annotators completed browsing tasks using a custom Chrome extension that recorded actions and screenshots across more than 1,100 websites. The result is 30,000 task trajectories spanning more than 590,000 individual subtask demonstrations.
Synthetic trajectories. To scale beyond what human annotation alone can provide, Ai2 generated additional trajectories using text-based accessibility-tree agents — single-agent runs filtered for task success, multi-agent pipelines that decompose tasks into subgoals and deterministic navigation paths across hundreds of websites. Critically, no proprietary vision agents were used. The synthetic data came from text-only systems, not from OpenAI Operator or Anthropic’s computer use API.
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GUI perception data. A third component trains the model to read and reason about page content directly from images. It includes more than 2.2 million screenshot question-answer pairs drawn from nearly 400 websites, covering element grounding and screenshot-based reasoning tasks.
“If you are able to perform a task and you’re able to record a trajectory from that, you should be able to train the web agent on that trajectory to do the exact same task,” Gupta said.
How MolmoWeb stacks up against the competition
In Gupta’s view, there are two categories of technologies in the browser agent market.
The first is API-only systems, capable but closed, with no visibility into training or architecture. OpenAI Operator, Anthropic’s computer use API and Google’s Gemini computer use fall into this group.
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The second is open-weight models, a significantly smaller category. Browser-use, the most widely adopted open alternative, is a framework rather than a trained model. It requires developers to supply their own LLM and build the agent layer on top.
MolmoWeb sits in the second category as a fully trained open-weight vision model. Ai2 reports it leads that group across four live-website benchmarks: WebVoyager, Online-Mind2Web, DeepShop and WebTailBench. According to Ai2, it also outperforms older API-based agents built on GPT-4o with accessibility tree plus screenshot input.
Ai2 documents several current limitations in the release. The model makes occasional errors reading text from screenshots, drag-and-drop interactions remain unreliable and performance degrades on ambiguous or heavily constrained instructions. The model was also not trained on tasks requiring logins or financial transactions.
Enterprise teams evaluating browser agents are not just choosing a model. They are deciding whether they can audit what they are running, fine-tune it on internal workflows, and avoid a per-call API dependency.
Residents in the San Francisco Bay Area can soon expect groceries and other home items delivered to their door by a large drone. Alphabet stated that Wing will expand its delivery service beginning March 24th, 2026, which has been a long time coming. Previously, this type of delivery was being tested on the Google campus in Mountain View. Office supplies were being zapped into employees’ offices, and they were frequently asking when this sort of stuff will reach their own houses. Wing is now making good on that promise by offering a residential delivery service to customers around the Bay Area.
You can place orders via the Wing app. On the app, you can order from Walmart or get meals from any of DoorDash’s restaurants. Walmart items arrive in around 10 minutes, and food from Wendy’s or Panera will follow shortly thanks to the DoorDash connection. Packages remain lightweight, weighing less than five pounds, which helps keep the drone stable in flight.
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Deliveries launch from small hubs set up near retail locations, sometimes nothing more than a section of a Walmart parking lot serving as a charging and loading area. Each drone takes off vertically before cruising to the customer’s address, covering up to six miles in a straight line and bypassing the traffic congestion that slows conventional delivery vehicles to a crawl. On arrival a small motorized tether lowers the package to a safe spot in the yard or wherever the customer has specified, with no need for anyone to be home to receive it.
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Wing is no stranger to residential delivery, having already logged 750,000 parcel drops across Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, and Charlotte as part of a network that currently serves close to two million customers. The Bay Area expansion is the next step in what is clearly a rapidly growing operation. Wing has also been testing a promising handoff system in partnership with Serve Robotics, where ground based robots collect food orders from restaurants and ferry them to a waiting drone for the final leg of the journey, a setup that could prove particularly valuable in dense urban areas where parking and foot traffic eat into delivery times. [Source]
Spring break travel and staffing shortages at the Transportation Security Administration have hit US airports with a devastating one-two punch this week, particularly at the security checkpoints. Personal accounts on social media have reported wait times of eight hours or more.
🚨FYI if you’re trying to fly out of IAH: my daughter has been in TSA line there for 8hours now and still not through security. Missed flight. Sleeping at airport to make sure she doesn’t miss her rebooked flight tomorrow am. Nightmare. https://t.co/VPia8a5zsx
Understaffed airports across the US are now being assisted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The White House deployed ICE agents on Monday to help ease the staffing shortages caused by TSA officers who have quit or stopped showing up for work. TSA employees have already missed a full paycheck as a result of the partial government shutdown, and now they could miss a second.
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Don’t be surprised if you get to the airport and see the security line trailing out into the parking lot. It’s easy to check security wait lines before you leave for the airport, so you know how long it will take to get from check-in to your gate. If you have spring break or other planned air travel coming soon, learn how you can check security line wait times so you can better plan your trip to the airport.
Check the official TSA app
The TSA maintains an app for mobile devices called MyTSA (iOS and Android) that lists security line wait times for airports around the US. The app is fairly basic and now includes a warning that “this website is not actively managed” due to the pause in federal funding, but it does include plenty of official TSA information about airline travel.
To check the wait times for specific US airports, tap the My Airports tab at the bottom of the app, then tap “Search Airports.” You can scroll through the alphabetical list of airports or type in an airport name or code in the search bar at the top.
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The TSA app will give you a 15-minute time range for security lines.
Screenshot by CNET
Tap through to the airport of your choice, and you’ll see the estimated security wait time at the top of the screen.
When I checked some of the major US airports Tuesday afternoon — Los Angeles (LAX), Chicago O’Hare (ORD), Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta (ATL), JFK in New York (JFK) and Ronald Reagan in DC (DCA) — most had relatively low wait times of 0 to 15 or 15 to 30 minutes. Only JFK had an estimate of 30 to 45 minutes.
Those estimates are a far cry from the two to four hours that airports are advising travelers to allow, but the times on the MyTSA app mostly matched the times listed on airport websites (see below). The exception was Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, which showed an estimate of 0-15 minutes on the MyTSA app, but slightly longer times on the airport website.
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The MyTSA app also includes historical averages for each airport’s security line wait times by time of day.
Check the airport website
When I tested the TSA app, it didn’t list specific terminals at any airports. It only listed a time range for “All Terminals.” If you want that sort of detailed information, your best bet is to use the official airport websites. Most major ones now offer estimated security wait times. Some airports put those estimated times front and center on their websites; others require a little more exploration.
The Hartsfield-Jackson airport website shows more detailed wait time information than the TSA app.
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Screenshot by CNET
Most airport websites will break out the times for specific terminals. At some bigger airports, there’s often quite a disparity between the terminals. Here are the web pages for estimated security wait lines for some of the most frequently traveled airports in the US:
I wasn’t able to find security line wait times on the websites for two of the busiest airports: O’Hare (ORD) in Chicago and Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas. For those, you’ll need to use the TSA app.
Save your spot in the security line
Numerous airports now allow travelers to reserve a specific time in the security line. At SeaTac Airport in Seattle, you make a Spot Saver reservation and go to a specially marked entrance to the security checkpoint listed on your reservation. An employee scans the barcode you were emailed, and you’re ushered to the front. At SeaTac, you can be up to 15 minutes before or after your Spot Saver reservation, since airport timing is tough to estimate.
Here’s a list of some of those reservation sites. You can search for your airport name and “reserve security line spot” or something similar to see if your airport also has a program.
There was a time when subscriptions felt like a novelty. Those were times of (digital) peace. A seamless payment feature on cool new apps that brought unlimited access (for the month). You paid for Netflix, and maybe Spotify, and that was usually about it.
Now, it’s streaming, cloud storage, fitness apps, editing apps, AI chatbots, random free trials you forgot to kill three weeks ago, and so much more. The subscription economy didn’t just grow — it exploded, with the blast radius covering nearly every corner of the digital space.
It has become so pervasive that there’s a real subscription fatigue, which feels even worse in 2026. People thought they weren’t spending a lot, but many clearly are. The system with recurring payments has become small (in price), automatic, and easy to forget.
Screengrab / Digital Trends
People have begun treating $5.99 or $10.00 charges as harmless when, in reality, the charges are piling up into something uglier over time. Subscription hell isn’t just about greed or convenience. It is also about invisibility.
Why subscription fatigue feels worse than normal spending
You often think twice before making a big purchase, and sometimes that one-off payment can sting a little. But this feeling dissipates over time. Subscriptions do the opposite. You won’t notice as they are hidden, sitting quietly in a corner, billing you for small amounts that you’ll barely notice. So they end up feeling like a bigger drain than a single large purchase. While the pain is less dramatic, it’s always around.
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While clearer cancellation rules can reduce the subscription traps, reports point out that behavioral habits like inertia and auto-renewal still keep people paying for services long after they’ve stopped caring. Visibility can help; people don’t need more guilt or another sermon about “being better with money.”
Rocket MoneyRocket
Making them all visible
Want to know how you can make your life easier? The answer is rather simple: round them all up. It’s like gathering your bills, but it’s more convenient with a smartphone. Once all your subscriptions live in one place, they stop feeling abstract and start looking like real financial patterns.
We’ve seen apps that track your bill payments and overall spending, but there are even dedicated apps to track all your subscriptions. These break down the walls that they hide behind, arranging them neatly for you to scrutinize.
And, you may not like what you see.
Apple offers a similar function on a basic level, allowing users to cancel any Apple Store subscriptions directly. But many of these recurring payments live outside of the App Store. So if you’re trying to clean house, you may need some professional help.
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The best subscription apps are not the flashiest ones
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Most people would turn away from bloated finance dashboards, so there is a real demand for simple, focused, and low-friction tools. So with that in mind, here are a few names that often pop up when talking about good subscription managers:
Subpli first got our attention for being a free app,which is also ad-free. It is available without the mandatory sign-up. It offers renewal reminders, category filters, monthly and yearly totals, and even a guest mode.
Bobby has been around for a while now and is easily one of the better-known options for iPhones. Its App Store listing highlights hundreds of built-in subscription templates, due-date notifications, and a clearer overview of fixed monthly costs.
Rocket Money, on the other hand, takes a more aggressive, finance-first approach than the simpler tracker apps. But it pitches itself as a service that will identify subscriptions for you. So you won’t need to manually log recurring payments, while also giving you a concierge-style flow to help cancel some unwanted expenses. That makes it more appealing for people who want a broader money-management tool.
Subby is another solid app if you want an Android-specific option. It is pretty straightforward, focusing on what matters, like tracking subscriptions and recurring bills in one dashboard, sending cancellation reminders before renewals, and supporting multiple currencies. There are even some extras like widgets and Google Drive backup for Pro users.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
It’s even becoming a policy problem
The subscription fatigue isn’t just a personal finance issue anymore. In the UK, the government has already proposed tougher rules aimed at “subscription traps,” including clearer information before signing up, renewal reminders, a 14-day cooling-off period after free trials, and easier cancellation processes. The government says unwanted subscription costs UK consumers about £1.6 billion a year through nearly 10 million of the country’s 155 million active subscriptions that are deemed unwanted.
The consumer data paints a similarly familiar picture. Surveys backed by multiple other findings suggest that US adults spend about $91 a month on subscriptions, while nearly half have forgotten to cancel a free trial. Younger users are also more likely to fall into that trap.
Subscription hell isn’t going away, but it’s time to step up
Companies love the recurring-revenue model, and with consumers still hooked to the convenience, this model is here to stay. But the real question is whether users can claw back some control.
The answer is yes, and it’s only by making it harder on yourself. Taking small steps like checking Apple’s built-in subscription page, searching your inbox for renewal emails, and using a tracker app brings more power to you. Basic visibility is what subscription culture and modern apps are engineered to take away. So seeing the damage clearly might be the only real counter to it.
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