Like the big one The language models that power generative AI tools are still absorbing more data across the web, Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince said Thursday at WIRED’s Big Interview event in San Francisco, as the internet infrastructure company has blocked more than 400 billion AI bot requests for its customers since July 1.
The action comes after the company announced Content Independence Day in July, an initiative with prominent publishers and AI companies to block AI crawlers from content creators’ work by default unless AI companies pay for access. Since July 2024, Cloudflare has offered its customers tools to prevent AI bots from deleting their content. Cloudflare told WIRED that the number of blocked AI bots since July 1, 2025 stands at 416 billion.
“The business model of the Internet has always been to generate content that generates traffic [to a website] and then sell things, subscriptions or ads,” Prince told WIRED editor-in-chief Brian Barrett. “What I think people don’t realize, though, is that AI is a platform shift. The Internet’s business model is on the verge of radical change. I don’t know what this will change, but it’s what I spend almost every hour of my day thinking about.
As a company, Cloudflare’s offerings aim to make access to online content faster and more secure. But as the AI industry has exploded and AI giants have emerged, Prince says he’s increasingly focused on how Cloudflare can leverage its position to discourage consolidation and protect the Internet as a place where businesses and creators of all sizes can survive or, ideally, thrive.
“We need to be able to ensure that businesses, large and small, thrive on a fair basis,” Prince said. “This is the future we’re trying to play for. It’s the best thing for our business, because it means more people as our customers. It allows us to protect more of the Internet.”
Prince specifically highlighted his concerns about Google’s policies regarding its search engines and AI crawlers. As a major AI player vying for dominance, Google has combined its search and AI bots into one, so blocking its AI scraper also blocks a site’s ability to be indexed in Google Search. The move has put content creators in a bind because they don’t want AI models to train on their creations, but they generally need their place in Google search to help audiences find their content.
“You can’t get out of one without getting out of both, which is a real challenge, it’s crazy,” Prince said. “You shouldn’t be able to use your monopoly position of yesterday to exert leverage and have a monopoly position in tomorrow’s market.”
