# Decentralized Logistics, AI Governance, and Audio Monetization

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-05-27

## Transcript

This is TechCrunch.
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Spotify is now letting you stream narrated magazine articles.
I'm Imran Shaikh and your Wednesday Daily Crunch starts right now.
E-commerce logistics company Stored has raised a $250 million round at a $3 billion valuation it announced on Tuesday.
Now, this doubled its valuation from a year ago round.
The new funding was led by Strike Capital with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Franklin Templeton, Bailey Gifford, G-Squared, and Bond.
Stored was founded in 2015 by then-college students CEO Sean Henry and CTO Jacob Boudreau while they were still at Georgia Tech.
It was soaring along, run by the two young founders, through the frothy pandemic era of VC funding, hitting unicorn status in 2021.
The startup survived the subsequent VC funding winter and in 2025 raised a $200 million mega round, also led by Strike Capital, that brought it to a $1.5 billion valuation.
It's now raised a total of about $775 million to date.
Stored offers a network of physical warehouses and inventory management software for e-commerce.
It builds itself as a sort of anti-Amazon, giving brands the speed to compete while still owning their customer relationships.
In this AI age, the Atlanta-based fulfillment startup is gaining attention again, especially after it added an AI interface to its software.
It was recently highlighted by Google at the tech giant's Cloud Next conference in April.
Universal Music Group, UMG, and TikTok recently announced the renewal of their licensing agreement, which includes a commitment to get rid of unauthorized AI-generated music from the platform and improve how artists and songwriters are credited.
In their joint announcement, UMG stated the agreement extends TikTok and UMG's groundbreaking commitment to AI protections that promote human artistry and ensure platform economics effectively flow through to artists and songwriters.
TikTok and UMG will work together to remove unauthorized AI-generated music from the platform while further improving artist and songwriter attribution.
This new agreement represents a notable shift in the relationship between UMG and TikTok.
In Spotify's rapidly evolving quest to become the home of everything audio-related, the company announced on Tuesday that it's bringing narrated long-form magazine articles to its app.
The articles will be available to premium subscribers as part of their 15 hours of audiobook listening time per month.
Now, free users can opt to purchase standalone articles for $1.99.
The streaming service said that there will be over 650 long-form magazine articles, available in English only.
from a collection of stories that includes publications like Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, Vogue, Variety, Billboard, Vibe, GQ, Wired, Vanity Fair, and Pitchfork.
Spotify says the articles were produced in-house by its audiobooks team and complement Spotify's existing audio offerings like podcasts.
Spotify tells TechCrunch that the narrated articles will use a mix of human and digital voice narration and that the portion of the articles using digital voice narration will be clearly labeled for users.
Beyond being another means of bringing monetizable audio to its app, Spotify believes the addition of articles could encourage users to try a different type of listening beyond music, which could, ultimately, lead them to try other forms of long-form listening, like its potentially more profitable audiobooks.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Sarah Perez, Julie Bort, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here tomorrow, same Tech Times, same Crunch channel.
And until then, find us at TechCrunch.com.