Cloudflare’s 2026 Annual Founders’ Letter
Cloudflare's founders say automated traffic already exceeds human web traffic and plan to pay sites agents use.
Cloudflare's 2026 founders' letter marks the company's 16th anniversary and says AI-assisted "vibe coding" is creating a new wave of websites, with more than 7 million developers on its platform. The company says automated traffic passed human traffic in May 2026, ahead of a prior 2027 forecast, and could reach 1,000 times human traffic within five years. It warns agent-driven commerce may favor incumbents and says it will cut redundant crawler fetches and let site owners get paid when agents use their content, alongside new partnerships.
- Automated traffic surpassed human traffic in May 2026.
- More than 7 million developers build on Cloudflare.
- Over half of reputable bot fetches returned unchanged content.
- Cloudflare wants sites paid when agents use their content.
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From the original article
5 min read at blog.cloudflare.com
The Internet is changing more today than at any point since Cloudflare launched back on September 27, 2010. As automated traffic surpasses human activity, we reflect on the rise of AI agents, new creators, and how we can help build a fair, sustainable future for the web.
By Matthew Prince · blog.cloudflare.com
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