Cloudflare CEO Says Bots Surpass Half of Internet Traffic as AI Reshapes Web

Prince described Cloudflare not simply as a service that makes the internet faster and protects it from bad actors, but as an effort to rebuild the internet "the way it should have been built from the beginning if we knew how important it was going to be." The company runs a network in more than 350 cities worldwide, with thousands of data centers, he said. It tries to keep applications and content safe online, protect people and employees wherever they go online, and give developers the ability to write applications that can scale to an entire internet audience on Cloudflare's infrastructure. Prince said that last part is the fastest-growing part of Cloudflare's business.

The company has recently begun to focus on how the internet's business model is changing, Prince said. For at least 30 years, advertising has driven much of that model, though it is not the entire model, he said. AI, bot traffic and AI scrapers are now forcing a shift, and Cloudflare is trying to help shape what the next business model looks like and make it as healthy as possible, according to the interview. Prince and the host discussed how to control bots, the mess they are making of the web, and what kinds of information might be valuable as payment schemes come into focus. Cloudflare's controls let website owners decide whether AI tools can access their content at all or only if they pay.

The interview includes a direct question about whether some of the outcomes Prince describes are actually good. In an introduction to the episode, the host wrote that Prince is a thoughtful person and that his answer was still on the host's mind after the conversation.

AI is also changing Cloudflare internally. Earlier this year, the company laid off more than 1,000 people, about 20 percent of its workforce, and Prince wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal titled "How I choose which Cloudflare employees to replace with AI." The episode is part of a two-part series on the future of business. Prince last appeared on Decoder about two and a half years ago, when the host described the moment as a wild pivot point for the internet. The host said that assessment underestimated what was coming, and that AI has made the period even wilder, with Prince and Cloudflare at the center.