Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said on The Verge's Decoder podcast that AI bots have become the dominant force on the web, with bots making up more than half of all internet traffic as of June. He argues this shift is breaking the advertising-based model that has supported the internet for three decades, a model largely built by Google.
Cloudflare, which sits between websites and the bots that visit them, now gives site owners the ability to block AI tools, allow them, or permit only those willing to pay. Prince frames this as part of Cloudflare's broader effort to reshape the business model of the internet for the AI age, rather than simply protecting sites from bad actors.
The interview also touched on internal upheaval at Cloudflare. Earlier this year the company laid off more than 1,000 employees, about 20% of its workforce, and Prince wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "How I choose which Cloudflare employees to replace with AI." He did not detail the selection criteria in the podcast excerpt.