Can Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince save the web from AI?
The Verge Nilay Patel
Cloudflare says bots now make up more than half of internet traffic. That could force the web to start charging AI systems for access.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Nilay Patel — read the original for the full story.
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Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince thinks the internet has hit a strange new phase: bots are no longer a side issue, they’re the main event. The company found in June that automated traffic already made up more than half of all internet traffic, and Prince says the number keeps climbing as AI firms scrape more of the web and as AI agents start acting on people’s behalf.
That puts Cloudflare in a powerful spot. It sits between websites and all those machines, which means site owners can choose to block AI tools, allow them, or, in some cases, only let through the ones that pay. Prince’s pitch is that the old bargain of the web is breaking. Advertising supported the internet for decades, but bots don’t click ads, and they don’t care about brand polish.
So he’s looking at something much older and weirder: payment for access. Cloudflare is working with companies like Coinbase and Stripe on a system that would let creators and publishers charge bots a tiny amount each time their information is used. Prince even points back to the web’s old 402 payment-required idea and imagines a future where websites can ask for a fraction of a penny instead of giving everything away for free.
He also argues the web is splitting in two. As an information source, it’s getting worse for publishers and contributors, because people increasingly get answers through systems like ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or other answer engines instead of visiting the original source. But as an application platform, the web is thriving. Prince says that tension is part of why the incentives to publish new information online are getting harder to justify.
Cloudflare is feeling the AI shift inside the company too. Earlier this year it laid off more than a thousand people, or 20 percent of its workforce, and Prince later published a Wall Street Journal op-ed under the headline, “How I choose which Cloudflare employees to replace with AI.” The company is not just watching the internet change. It’s trying to rewrite the rules while cutting staff at the same time.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the cleanest argument yet for why the web is drifting toward tolls, not ads. Cloudflare is in exactly the right place to push that idea, which is convenient if you like being the toll booth on the only road in town. The bigger tell is that nobody is really defending the old bargain anymore; they’re just trying to survive the bots.
Read more about this at: The Verge