Popular caller ID app Truecaller has long left iPhone users at a disadvantage by not offering the caller information in real-time — a feature its Android users have enjoyed for some time. Today, that changes as the company is rolling out an update that brings real-time caller ID support to its iOS subscribers.
The company was able to implement the feature because Apple introduced Live Caller ID Lookup in iOS 18, allowing third-party caller ID apps to securely make a call to their server to get information about the caller. Notably, this is also the first major release from the Swedish company after the co-founders Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam stepped down from the day-to-day operations in November 2024.
Today, Truecaller has more than 2.6 million paying subscribers, of which only around 750,000 of them are on iOS. However, 40% of Truecaller’s revenue is from iOS subscriptions. The company also gets a 5X conversation rate to its premium tier on iOS compared to Android as well as 80% higher revenue from an iPhone subscriber.
Considering the importance of the iPhone to Truecaller’s bottom line, the company continues to develop its iOS app.
In 2022, Truecaller relaunched the iOS app to focus on better spam detection, thanks to Apple allowing the app to store a larger set of numbers locally.
“It did improve the overall call identification. But that wasn’t enough because in countries like India, there is a huge calling activity, and not all this would be available in the offline database,” Truecaller Product Director Nakul Kabra told TechCrunch in an interview.
India presents other challenges for the company, as well, including the arrival of a service, Calling Name Presentation (commonly called CNAP, designed to curb spam. The service, currently being rolled out by local telcos, could eventually emerge as a competitor to Truecaller.
Truecaller also updated its iOS app in 2023 with a live caller ID experience, but that involved a step requiring interaction with Siri and also wasn’t real-time.
Until iOS 18’s release, Truecaller had to rely on a locally saved dictionary of limited phone numbers on iOS.
To enable the new feature, Truecaller built a new server architecture and created a separate, encrypted database for iOS, alongside its existing larger database for Android users. Apple’s Phone app makes encrypted requests to this database and gets encrypted responses that are only decrypted on the client (iPhone) to show the caller ID in real time. This process is called “homomorphic encryption,” as the computations use encrypted data instead of decrypting them first, while decryption happens on the client to display caller information if it matches with the data stored on the server.
Kabra told TechCrunch that Truecaller had built a way to sync two databases to keep the data synced between them.
“At the moment, there might be a bit of a delay because these requests get queued up, and the encryption that we do is very time-consuming — and very expensive… But it should not be more than a few hours,” he said.
TechCrunch tested live caller ID under Truecaller’s beta program last week and noticed that the feature does provide caller information in real-time in most cases, though it sometimes misses.
Truecaller’s premium tier on iOS starts at $9.99 a month, per individual, or $74.99/year. The company also offers its family plan on iOS starting at $14.99/month or $99.99/year and the top-end Gold subscription at $249 a year.
Users can enable the Live Caller ID Lookup feature through iPhone Settings > Apps > Phone > Call Blocking & Identification.
On iOS 18, Truecaller also updated its interface with the caller’s name appearing in bold over their number. Now, Truecaller is working on support for images to show up in the caller ID for its iOS users.
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President Trump on Tuesday pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the infamous dark web exchange Silk Road, which was best known as a once-thriving online marketplace for illegal drugs.
Trump announced the news in a Truth Social post, saying the pardon was in honor of Ulbricht’s mother and the Libertarian movement.
In 2015, a federal judge sentenced Ulbricht to life in prison for operating Silk Road under the pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts.” But last May, while on the 2024 campaign trail, Trump promised to commute Ulbricht’s life sentence while speaking to the Libertarian National Convention.
Ulbricht started Silk Road as a Libertarian experiment, and the party has been lobbying to exonerate Ulbricht of his crimes for years now. Within the Libertarian Party, many viewed Ulbricht’s life sentence as a symbol of government overreach.
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Jesse Tinsley, CEO of a workforce management company, Employer.com, is conducting what could become the year’s wildest acquisition spree.
First, Employer.com announced its plan last month to acquire Bench, the Canadian accounting startup that abruptly shut down over the holidays.
Now, Tinsley and Employer.com have joined hands with YouTuber MrBeast and others to save TikTok by submitting an all-cash bid for the app, according to a report in Bloomberg.
They haven’t disclosed the bid’s amount. The group’s legal counsel includes Brad Bondi, the brother of Trump’s attorney general pick, Pam Bondi.
TikTok briefly went dark on Saturday but reinstated itself shortly before President Trump signed an executive order on Monday delaying any potential ban for 75 days.
It’s not clear if TikTok’s owner ByteDance has seriously considered the offer, Bloomberg reported. Others floated as potential buyers include Elon Musk, Amazon, Oracle, and a syndicate headed by billionaire Frank McCourt.
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A Delaware judge has sanctioned Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s former COO and board member, for allegedly deleting emails related to the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.
The decision arises from a case Meta shareholders brought against Sandberg and another former Meta board member, Jeff Zients, late last year. The plaintiffs alleged that Sandberg and Zients used personal email accounts to communicate about issues relating to a 2018 shareholder lawsuit that accused Facebook leaders of violating the law — and their fiduciary duties — in failing to protect users’ privacy.
Plaintiffs also alleged that Sandberg and Zients deleted emails from their personal inboxes despite being instructed not to do so by a court. In a decision Tuesday, the Delaware judge overseeing the case found the accusations to be convincing.
“The defendants disclosed Sandberg’s personal Gmail account, maintained under a pseudonym, that she used to ‘communicate about matters potentially relevant to the claims and defenses in this action,’” the judge’s decision reads. “Counsel’s failure to give a straight answer in Sandberg’s interrogatory responses or when answering plaintiffs’ questions supports an inference that Sandberg was not using an auto-delete function but rather picking and choosing which emails to delete.”
In sanctioning Sandberg, the judge raised the legal standard for Sandberg’s affirmative defense, the defense based on facts other than those in support of the plaintiff’s claim. Now, Sandberg must prove her defense by “clear and convincing” evidence — not merely a “preponderance” of evidence, a burden that’s easier to clear.
The judge has also awarded plaintiffs certain expenses.
In a statement to TechCrunch via email, a spokesperson for Sandberg said that the plaintiffs’ claims “have no merit.”
“All work emails were preserved on Facebook’s servers,” the spokesperson said.
At the root of the courtroom battle are allegations that Meta officials violated a 2012 FTC order under which the company agreed to stop collecting and sharing Facebook users’ personal data without their consent. Facebook allegedly later sold the data to commercial partners, including political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, and allegedly removed disclosures from privacy settings that were required under the FTC’s order.
In 2019, Meta agreed to pay the FTC $5 billion to settle charges that the company violated the 2012 order. The company has also paid penalties from regulators in Europe.
Update: Added a statement from a spokesperson for Sandberg.
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Microsoft was once the exclusive provider of data center infrastructure for OpenAI to train and run its AI models. No longer.
Coinciding with the announcement of Stargate, OpenAI’s massive new AI infrastructure deal with SoftBank, Oracle, and others, Microsoft says it has signed a new agreement with OpenAI that gives it “right of first refusal” on new OpenAI cloud computing capacity. That means that, going forward, Microsoft gets first choice over whether to host OpenAI’s AI workloads in the cloud — but if Microsoft can’t meet its needs, OpenAI can go to a rival cloud provider.
“OpenAI recently made a new, large Azure commitment that will continue to support all OpenAI products as well as training,” Microsoft said in a blog post. “To further support OpenAI, Microsoft has approved OpenAI’s ability to build additional capacity, primarily for research and training of models.”
OpenAI has blamed a lack of available compute for delaying its products, and compute capacity has reportedly become a source of tension between the AI company and Microsoft, its close collaborator and major investor. In June, Microsoft, under shareholder pressure, permitted OpenAI to ink a deal with Oracle for additional capacity.
In the blost post, Microsoft reiterated that “key elements” of its longstanding partnership with OpenAI remain in place through 2030, including its access to OpenAI’s IP, revenue sharing arrangements, and exclusivity on OpenAI’s APIs.
That assumes, of course, that OpenAI doesn’t achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI) under the two companies’ agreed-upon definition before then. When OpenAI develops AI systems that can generate at least $100 billion in profits, Microsoft will lose access to the company’s technology, according to a reported agreement between the firms.
OpenAI is said to be considering nullifying the agreement in a possible bid to secure more Microsoft funding.
“The OpenAI API is exclusive to Azure, runs on Azure and is also available through the Azure OpenAI Service,” the blog post reads. “This agreement means customers benefit from having access to leading models on Microsoft platforms and direct from OpenAI.”
We’ve reached out to OpenAI and Microsoft for more information and will update this post if we hear back.
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OpenAI says that it will team up with Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and with Oracle, along with others, to build multiple data centers for AI in the U.S.
The joint venture, called The Stargate Project, will begin with a large data center project in Texas and eventually expand to other states. The companies expect to commit $100 billion to Stargate initially and pour up to $500 billion into the venture over the next four years.
They promise it will create “hundreds of thousands” of jobs and “secure American leadership in AI.”
“The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to [build] new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States,” OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank said in a joint statement. “This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.”
The companies made the announcement during a press conference at the White House on Tuesday, where President Donald Trump spoke about plans for investment in U.S. infrastructure. SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison were in attendance.
Microsoft is also involved in Stargate as a tech partner. So are Arm and Nvidia. Middle East AI fund MGX will join SoftBank in its investment; MGX’s first public deal was an investment in OpenAI.
SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle are also listed as “initial equity investors” in Stargate.
“SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners for Stargate, with SoftBank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility,” the statement continued. “Masayoshi Son will be the chairman [of Stargate] […] As part of Stargate, Oracle, Nvidia, and OpenAI will closely collaborate to build and operate this computing system.”
The data centers could house chips designed by OpenAI someday. The company is said to be aggressively building out a team of chip designers and engineers, and working with semiconductor firms Broadcom and TSMC to create an AI chip for running models that could arrive as soon as 2026.
SoftBank is already an investor in OpenAI, having reportedly committed $500 million toward the AI startup’s last funding round and an additional $1.5 billion to allow OpenAI staff to sell shares in a tender offer. Oracle, meanwhile, has an ongoing deal with OpenAI to supply AI computing resources.
Softbank also earlier pledged to invest $100 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. Son and Trump have had a close working relationship since 2016, during Trump’s first term, when Son announced that SoftBank would invest $50 billion in U.S. startups and create 50,000 jobs.
The Information previously reported that OpenAI was negotiating with Oracle to lease an entire data center in Abilene, Texas — a data center that could could reach nearly a gigawatt of electricity by mid-2026. (A gigawatt is enough to power roughly 750,000 small homes.) Data center startup Crusoe Energy was said to be involved in the project, which was estimated to cost around $3.4 billion.
That Abilene site will be Stargate’s first site, and OpenAI says that Stargate is “evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses as [it finalizes] definitive agreements.”
It’s unclear what connection, if any, Stargate has to a rumored partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI to spin up a $100 billion supercomputer. TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for additional information.
Last year, The Information reported that Microsoft and OpenAI would build a series of data centers for AI beginning in five stages over the next several years, culminating in Stargate: a 5-gigawatt facility spanning several hundred acres of land. Stargate was expected to take between five and six years to complete, according to The Information. In the lead-up to its completion, Microsoft had reportedly planned to launch a smaller-scope data center for OpenAI around 2026.
A number of tech leaders have called for the U.S. to up its investment in data centers, particularly as the AI industry continues to grow at an explosive pace. AI systems require enormous server banks to develop and run at scale.
Goldman Sachs estimates that AI will represent about 19% of data center power demand by 2028. OpenAI has blamed a lack of available compute for delaying its products, and compute capacity has reportedly become a source of tension between the AI company and Microsoft, its close collaborator and major investor.
Microsoft, which recently announced it is on track to spend $80 billion on AI data centers, said in a recent blog post that the company’s success depends on “new partnerships founded on large-scale infrastructure investments.” In an interview with Bloomberg, Altman said that he believes it is urgent that what he perceives as barriers to building additional data center infrastructure in the U.S. be cleared.
“The thing I really deeply agree with [President Trump] on is, it is wild how difficult it has become to build things in the United States,” Altman said in that interview. “Power plants, data centers, any of that kind of stuff. I understand how bureaucratic cruft builds up, but it’s not helpful to the country in general.”
Massive data center projects have vocal critics who say that data centers often create fewer jobs than promised and tend to have severe environmental impacts. Data centers are typically water hungry, placing a strain on regions with insufficient water resources, and their high power requirements have forced some utilities to lean heavily on fossil fuels.
Those concerns don’t appear to be slowing investments any. Per a McKinsey report, capital spending on procurement and installation of mechanical and electrical systems for data centers could eclipse $250 billion in the next five years.
In January, Trump announced that Hussain Sajwani, an Emirati billionaire businessman who founded the property development giant DAMAC Properties, will invest $20 billion in new data centers across the U.S. Industry insiders have expressed skepticism of the deal’s concreteness, however.
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