What Is Crunchyroll? The Sony-Owned Platform Bringing Anime to the World, Explained by Marine

Article

The platform most international fans use to watch anime today started as a project by four computer science graduates.

From Student Project to Legitimate Platform

Crunchyroll was founded in 2006 by four UC Berkeley graduates, initially as a site for subtitled anime shortly after Japanese broadcast. Ownership passed through The Chernin Group (2013) and AT&T/WarnerMedia (2018-2019) before Sony acquired it in August 2021 for $1.175 billion, merging it with Funimation in 2022.

A Global Anime Powerhouse

By 2026, Crunchyroll surpassed 21 million paid subscribers worldwide (up ~25% from 2025), with US streaming minutes more than doubling year-over-year to 4.4 billion in January 2026, offering over 1,000 titles with the industry's most comprehensive simulcast schedule.

What To Know

Understanding Crunchyroll's origin as a site built by computer science students for watching subtitled anime (originally without full licensing) before becoming a fully legitimate, Sony-owned platform traces a huge shift in how anime distribution moved from informal fan communities to major corporate media strategy.

Sony's ownership of both Crunchyroll (distribution) and multiple anime production studios gives the company an unusually vertically integrated position across the anime industry, from production through to how international fans actually watch the content.

What Fans Are Saying

• "Crazy that Crunchyroll started as a college project."
• "21 million subscribers shows how mainstream anime streaming has become."
• "Sony owning both studios and the streaming platform is a huge strategic position."

Original Japanese

• 「Crunchyrollが大学生のプロジェクトから始まったとは驚きです」
• 「2100万人の会員数は、アニメ配信の主流化を物語っていますね」
• 「ソニーが制作と配信の両方を持っているのは大きな戦略的優位性です」

Easy Japanese

「Crunchyroll」は、2006年に始まったアニメ配信サービスです。今ではソニーが運営しています。