Cloudflare CEO says automated traffic has already overtaken human traffic online

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince discussed how AI-driven bot traffic is reshaping the internet's economy in an interview on The Verge's "Decoder" podcast. Cloudflare, which provides infrastructure and security for a large share of the web, found in June that bots now account for more than half of all internet traffic. Because Cloudflare sits between websites and AI systems, it lets site owners choose to block bots, allow them, or permit only bots willing to pay for access.

Prince said the company's data shows automated traffic has already overtaken traffic generated by humans. Last November, Cloudflare had forecast this crossover would happen in the second half of 2027; by March that estimate had moved up to the first half of 2027; then in May the company's team reported it had already occurred. Prince said that if current trends continue, automated traffic could reach 1,000 times human traffic within five years, even as human traffic itself stays roughly flat.

Because bots don't respond to ads, the advertising-based business model that Google built up over nearly 30 years doesn't work for automated traffic. Prince said content creators are increasingly demanding payment from bots for access to information, effectively reviving the internet's original HTTP status code 402, "Payment Required." Cloudflare is working with Coinbase and Stripe on micropayment systems that would let publishers earn a small fee each time a bot accesses their content, funded by subscription fees AI companies charge for their agents.

The conversation also touched on Cloudflare's own restructuring: earlier this year the company laid off more than 1,000 employees, roughly 20 percent of its workforce, after which Prince wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal explaining the decision to replace some employees with AI.