Cloudflare’s 2026 Annual Founders’ Letter

Cloudflare’s 16th anniversary message describes an Internet being rapidly reshaped by AI, with a surge in new websites since mid-2025 driven not primarily by low-quality content but by creators using AI-assisted development tools. The company says more than 7 million developers now build on its platform and predicts automated traffic, accelerated by AI agents and crawlers, surpassed human traffic in May 2026 and could become 1,000 times larger within five years. While agents can efficiently research products and services for users, Cloudflare warns that their extensive crawling imposes costs on websites and may favor established businesses with more available data, making it harder for new entrants and smaller local businesses to compete. The company advocates for an Internet where creators and businesses can be compensated when agents use their content, while introducing technology intended to reduce unnecessary crawler requests by serving updated material rather than repeatedly fetching unchanged pages.

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