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AI NewsThe App Store is booming again, and AI may be why

The App Store is booming again, and AI may be why

10:02 PM IST · April 18, 2026

The App Store is booming again, and AI may be why

Everyone said AI would kill apps. Instead, new app launches are soaring. According to a new analysis from market intelligence providerAppfigures, worldwide app releases in the first quarter of 2026 were up 60% year-over-year across both Apple’s App Store and Google Play. That percentage was an even higher 80% when looking at the iOS App Store alone. In April 2026 so far, the total number of app releases is up 104% across both stores compared to the same time last year, and up 89% on iOS. As Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Greg “Joz” Joswiak, quipped Ina recent interview: rumors of the App Store’s death in the AI age “may have been greatly exaggerated.” These findings come amid concerns that the rise of AI chatbots and agents would ultimately see users turning away from apps — a theory that’s already being floated by those in the industry,like Nothing CEO Carl Pei, who is focused on building a smartphone for the AI era.The New York Timesalso reported last year on the potential for new computing platforms to eclipse the smartphone, like smart glasses, ambient computing devices, or reimagined smartwatches with AI features. OpenAI is evenworking on an AI hardware devicewith famed Apple designer Jony Ive. But there’s another possibility, too: AI will make it easier for anyone to create apps, driving a rebirth of the App Store. The new app gold rush could be led by creators who have ideas but not the technical skills to design mobile software. Appfigures’ data indicates that certain categories of apps are seeing more new releases than others. Mobile games still account for most of the new app releases worldwide as of Q1 2026, as they have in prior years. But “productivity” apps have moved into the top five this year. The “utilities” category has also moved up to the number two slot, and the “lifestyle” apps category moved up from the No. 5 slot last year to now No. 3. Finally, “health and fitness”-style applications rounded out the top five categories. The working hypothesis here is that AI-powered tools, like Claude Code or Replit, could be behind the surge of new launches. It also seems possible that we’re hitting some sort of tipping point in terms of AI usability, where it’s easy enough for people to leverage these tools to build their own desired mobile apps more quickly — or even build their first apps ever. The explosion of new apps for Apple to review could also be behind some of the tech giant’s recent missteps. This week,Apple pulled the rewards app Freecash from the App Storefor rules violations, after letting the app climb the store’s Top Charts and sit in the top five for months. Apple was also caught off guard by a malicious cryptocurrency app, a clone of Ledger Live, thatdrained $9.5 million in cryptofrom victims’ accounts. While high-profile problems like this can generate bad PR for the App Store, the company still does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of blocking and rejecting dangerous or spammy apps. Apple’smost recent analysis from 2024said the company had removed or rejected more than 17,000 apps for bait-and-switch violations that year; rejected more than 320,000 app submissions that were found to be spam, copying other apps, or misleading; and took action to prevent more than 37,000 potentially fraudulent apps from reaching users on the App Store. Still, Apple pundits like John Gruber havelong arguedthat the App Storeneedsa “bunco squad” of sorts that watches for scammy or fraudulent apps that are gaining in popularity or high-grossing. If AI-assisted vibe coding turns out to be behind the recent surge of app releases, that need will only grow as more new apps flood the marketplace, not all of which will be benign.

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How to turn off AI in your Google Docs

How to turn off AI in your Google Docs

It happened to me: I opened a Google Doc to write an article, and I was immediately confronted with a text box inviting me to “write with Gemini.” I looked for some button to swipe away the garish AI display, but I could not find it. It made me mad. Now, instead of writing the article I’m supposed to be working on, I am writing about how to get the AI pop-ups off of your Google Docs screen, since it took me some time to figure out. You’re welcome. The first fix is pretty straightforward: Full disclosure: I was so enraged when I set out to find “bottom bar preferences” that I initially missed it entirely. Instead, I clicked “Ask something else” and asked Gemini to help me remove itself from my life. AI may not be human, but Gemini seemed to have some sort of survival instinct, because it told me to click the “X” icon. That does not remove Gemini. It simply closed the conversation, the one in which I was asking it how to turn itself off. Suspicious! Other aggrieved Google Docs users have reported features that I have yet to encounter, like a“help me write” featurethat hovers over your cursor while you work. This seems like something that would upset me, so it’s probably worth nipping that in the bud before it’s too late. Benjamin Franklinonce said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” (He was talking about fire safety. I am talking about product design.) Instead of turning off each individual AI feature like a game of whac-o-mole, we can disable “smart features” across our Google workspace via Gmail. You should now be safe from annoying Gemini pop-ups that disrupt your writing process in Google Docs. You can rest easy.

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NEA’s Tiffany Luck on AI IPOs, personal agents, and the ROI reckoning

NEA’s Tiffany Luck on AI IPOs, personal agents, and the ROI reckoning

Tokenmaxxingwas the hottest trend in Silicon Valley earlier this year, with CEOs encouraging employees to push AI usage as far as it would go.Then the bill came due. Uber reportedly blew through its annual AI budget in a few months, some companies cut Claude licenses for parts of their org, and Meta killed its internal leaderboard. This tension between hype and ROI is exactly whereNEA partner Tiffany Lucklives these days. She got her start convincing companies that e-commerce was the future, and now she’s all in on AI, especially when it comes to the possibilities for “magic moments” in the consumer business. On this episode of TechCrunch’sEquitypodcast, Luck joins Rebecca Bellan to talk about the future of personal agents, her thoughts on this year’s AI IPOs, and how startups are stepping in to help enterprises track return on AI spend. Listen to the full episode to hear: Subscribe to Equity onYouTube,Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. You also can follow Equity onXandThreads, at @EquityPod.

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Anthropic becomes first AI startup to join the Frontier carbon removal coalition

Anthropic becomes first AI startup to join the Frontier carbon removal coalition

Anthropic is joining Frontier, the carbon removal collective, contributing to a new $915 million tranche of funding and marking its arrival as the first AI startup to join the group. The new funding nearly doubles pledges toFrontier, bringing the total to $1.8 billion. So far, Frontier has contracted nearly $700 million across more than 50 projects to remove 1.8 million tons of carbon. Companies that have pledged money to Frontier typically use the company’s carbon removal credits to reduce their publicly listed carbon footprints. The new funding will help bolster Frontier’s position in the carbon removal industry, but more notable are Anthropic’s pledges. While Google is a founding member, Anthropic is the first pure AI company to join the ranks. Its membership comes at a time when AI companies have been on an energy buying spree,not allof whichhas been squeaky clean. Joining Frontier is Anthropic’s first climate-related deal. The company has yet to produce a sustainability report, and ithas saidit favors an “all of the above” approach to energy, a statement which typically translates into large purchases of polluting power. But the move might signal changing attitudes within the company. Frontier was founded by tech companies, including Stripe, Google, and Shopify, to help them fulfill their climate pledges. The founding companies, and others, face a dilemma: Many want to hit zero emissions in the next decade or two, but there are some emissions they can’t eliminate today, like air travel. But at the same time, carbon removal was, and still is, a nascent industry without large players that could remove the amount of carbon companies needed. Frontier vets carbon removal companies and signs contracts for those it thinks will be able to deliver. Carbon removal credits, like the kind supported by Frontier, let companies continue to emit some pollution. The credits can be subtracted from their carbon footprint, similar to how profits might counter debts on a balance sheet. Frontier vets projects, serving as a sort of shared resource for companies interested in carbon removal. In the announcement of the new pledges, Frontier said that funding for future projects would come with a higher level of scrutiny. The organization said it will fund fewer projects, focusing on those that it thinks have the best chance at removing a gigaton — 1 billion metric tons — of CO2or more annually. New contracts will run around eight to 10 years, Frontier said. Since its launch in 2022, Frontier has backed a range of carbon removal technologies over the years, includingdirect air capture,enhanced rock weathering,bio-oil,ocean antacids, andbioenergy with carbon removal and sequestration. Frontier’s shift from lots of smaller bets to fewer larger ones mimicswhat appears to be happening at Microsoft, which has been the largest buyer of carbon removal credits. Though companies want the carbon removal market to grow and mature, they’re making it clear that they don’t want to underwrite it in perpetuity. For any new contract it signs, the carbon removal company must “show a path to government subsidy/support,” a Frontier spokesperson told TechCrunch. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that carbon dioxide removal technologywill be necessaryif the world is to reach net zero emissions, though few companies or consumers are interested in footing the bill. Like clean water, the problem is almost certain to fall on governments eventually. Frontier said it will contract as far out as 2040. It didn’t say what will happen after that, but it’s pretty clear they hope governments will have started to take the reins by then. Any if they don’t? At therate the climate is warming, we’ll have bigger problems on our hands.

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World leaders want American AI. They just don’t want America to be able to turn it off.

World leaders want American AI. They just don’t want America to be able to turn it off.

At the G7 Summit on Wednesday, world leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi voiced concerns that the U.S. could cut off their countries’ access to top American AI models at any time. Macron warned G7 leaders and top AI executives — including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and President Donald Trump  — over lunch that if the U.S. “from one day to the next can turn off the switch,” it could not only harm the economies of European customers but also damage the AI firms themselves. The comments come a few days after the Trump administration blocked Anthropic from exporting its newest Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models on national security grounds. The order came after Amazon flagged to the White House that certain safety guardrails could be bypassed. Even thoughcybersecurity expertshaveargued that the capabilitiescited by the government are also present in models that remain freely available, including from OpenAI, Anthropic’s models are still on ice. The episode has exposed a risk that manyinternational companies have been grappling with: Any company or government that builds on U.S. AI infrastructure now has to reckon with the possibility that access can be revoked overnight, for reasons they may never be told. Prime Minister Modi also said he was concerned about Trump’s move to block Anthropic’s model, according to reporting fromFinancial Times, adding that democratic nations must have unfettered access to top AI models to protect critical infrastructure. “The recent restriction on access to Anthropic’s models confirms what we at Cohere have known all along: that companies and democratic nations remaining dependent on a small handful of big tech companies is dangerous to resilience,” Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Canadian enterprise AI firm Cohere, said in a statement shared with TechCrunch. “Digital sovereignty is not just about market competition or any one company or nation. It’s about who controls the foundational technology that will shape our economic security and national sovereignty for decades to come.” During the meeting, G7 leaders also discussed thecreation of a “trusted partners”scheme that would grant access for non-U.S. nations to advanced AI models from firms like Anthropic and OpenAI. The goal is to maintain a sort of open trade network that bypasses U.S. restrictions. Both countries and companies could be trusted partners, as long as they used the models to develop stronger defenses against rivals like China. But it’s not clear how far that trusted partner scheme would extend, or whether it’s an answer for a startup in Paris or Bangalore that just had its product break without warning. Regardless, Macron noted that it would make sense for Washington to back such a scheme and to ensure Mythos access was granted more broadly. Nobody would want to buy U.S. AI access if it could disappear overnight. The comments were made even as Europe and other non-U.S. countries attempt topush for AI sovereignty— an increasingly difficult case to make when American models keep pulling ahead and nobody wants to be left out.

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