

“AI Will Break the Internet” — Cloudflare CEO’s Big Prediction
25 snips Aug 28, 2025
Matthew Prince, Co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, discusses the evolution of his company, which now protects a significant portion of internet traffic. He dives into the urgent challenges posed by AI, particularly how it threatens the traditional web business model. Prince emphasizes the need for creators to be compensated fairly and paints a vision for a more sustainable, human-centered internet. The conversation reflects on the balance between ethics and profitability as Cloudflare navigates its mission-driven journey.
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Free Product Built The Company
- Cloudflare started by offering a free light firewall to gather data and improve security models.
- That strategy attracted the hacker community and forced the team to build DNS, registrar, and DDoS mitigation products.
Technical Storytelling Built Trust
- Cloudflare's blog started as technical storytelling that built trust and brand recognition.
- Explaining how the internet works turned engineering work into public-facing product and culture.
Saving Ukrainian Newspaper Sparked Galileo
- A free customer under attack turned out to be Ukraine's largest independent newspaper during Russia's invasion of Crimea.
- That incident spurred Cloudflare to create Project Galileo to protect politically important small sites for free.