What is Cloudflare?

Matthew Prince on how hard it is to get referral traffic from AI crawlers versus the old Google baseline.

“Today it's 20 times harder with Google than it used to be. But that's the good news. With OpenAI, it's 1,500 times harder. With Anthropic, it's 60,000 times harder.”

No existing crypto project has demonstrated the throughput needed for internet-scale microtransactions. Cloudflare needs 10 million transactions per second on day one and up to 100 million eventually, while the best observed crypto throughput is 2 million.

“We don't see in the ecosystem yet anyone who has built something that we think can scale to the levels where the transactions amounts are but the volumes are extraordinary.”

Cloudflare is actively searching for a layer-one blockchain capable of 10 to 100 million transactions per second to power internet-scale AI microtransactions. No qualifying solution currently exists, making this an open opportunity for crypto infrastructure builders.

“If you want to go build like a layer one, you know, blockchain that can support 100 million transactions per second.”

Cloudflare reported that agent and bot browsing now accounts for more web use than human browsing.

“Cloudflare reported that agent and bot browsing accounted for more web use than human browsing.”

Cloudflare says AI bot traffic will surpass human traffic on the internet in the first half of 2027, pulled forward from a prior estimate of full-year 2027.

“Based on what we've seen, we were saying it was 2027, we're now saying it's the first half of 2027 that will cross.”

The highest transaction throughput observed in the crypto ecosystem is 2 million transactions per second, far below the 10 million per second Cloudflare says it needs on day one.

“The highest we've seen is two.”

80 percent of AI companies are Cloudflare customers, per Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince.

“80% of the AI companies are customers.”

Cloudflare is integrating X42 stablecoin payments using OUSD and USDC, with management warning no existing blockchain can handle the eventual scale.

“They are now putting X42 stable coin payments.”

Despite AI disrupting web traffic, the number of new websites being created is growing again at rates resembling early-2000s internet growth, after stagnating from 2012 until recently.

“The number of websites that are being created, the number of new things that are happening is actually is actually growing again, and growing at rates that and resemble like what the early 2000s growth rates of the internet look like.”

Cloudflare data shows 55 to 60 percent of all internet activity today is bots.

“25% of the internet runs through cloudflare and you know they've been releasing this data that you know I think we're all up to like 50 between 55 and 60% of like all internet activity or bots now today.”