Crunchyroll is owned by Sony (Japan, NYSE: SONY), which acquired the brand on 9 August 2021.[1][2] Crunchyroll was founded in 2006 in the United States and was independent until 2021.
Crunchyroll began as an unlicensed anime site started by university students and became the licensed global home of the format. Sony acquired it from AT&T in 2021 for $1.175 billion and merged its own Funimation service into it. Anime distribution had long been fragmented by territory and delayed by months, and simultaneous subtitled release is the change that turned it into a mainstream global business.
Controlling ownership as of . Brands grouped under the entity that owns them; large groups are collapsed.
Open the full Sony ownership tree →
Sony acquired Crunchyroll from AT&T for $1.175 billion and merged its own Funimation service into it. Crunchyroll had begun as an unlicensed anime site run by university students; simultaneous licensed release is what turned anime into a mainstream global business.
No tagged news items yet. Headlines are added nightly from public feeds; only titles and links are stored.
Headlines link to the original publisher. Brandtree does not reproduce article text.
The parent company of Crunchyroll is Sony, a publicly listed company headquartered in Japan.
Crunchyroll originated in the United States in 2006, but it is owned today by Sony, which is headquartered in Japan. So Crunchyroll is an American-origin brand under Japanese ownership.
Sony completed its acquisition of Crunchyroll on 9 August 2021, after announcing the deal on 9 December 2020.
Crunchyroll was an independent company from its founding in 2006 until Sony acquired it in 2021.
Yes. As of 8 September 2026, Crunchyroll is still owned by Sony. The ownership record was last checked against primary sources on that date.
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
Report a correction Opens a pre-filled GitHub issue. See our corrections policy.