Cloudflare shares jumped about 16% Friday after the internet-infrastructure company raised its full-year outlook, as artificial-intelligence spending drives more developers and companies onto the network that sits between websites, applications and their users.
Cloudflare now expects 2026 revenue of $2.86 billion to $2.87 billion, up from its previous forecast of $2.805 billion to $2.813 billion. Second-quarter revenue climbed 36% to $696.1 million, while the company also increased its adjusted earnings forecast.
The important shift is that AI spending is spreading beyond chips and data centers into the plumbing of the internet itself.
Cloudflare operates a global network that helps companies deliver websites and applications faster, protect them from cyberattacks and run software closer to users. Its Workers platform allows developers to build and execute applications across that network without managing their own servers.
That architecture is becoming more valuable as AI applications grow.
AI agents can generate far more automated internet activity than traditional human users, repeatedly accessing websites, APIs and databases as they complete tasks. That creates demand for computing capacity, security and traffic management — areas where Cloudflare already operates.
The company added roughly 2 million developers during the second quarter alone, more than the approximately 1.5 million it added during all of last year. Large customers spending more than $100,000 annually also continued to grow.
Cloudflare is additionally trying to position itself between AI companies and the publishers whose material those systems consume. Its tools can help website owners identify, block or charge AI crawlers that collect content for model training and responses.
That potentially gives Cloudflare another role in the emerging AI economy: not simply carrying internet traffic, but helping determine who can access valuable online content and under what terms.
The opportunity comes with a high valuation and significant expectations. Investors are already pricing Cloudflare as one of the companies most likely to benefit from a more automated internet, leaving little room for growth to disappoint.
But Friday’s results reinforce a broader trend.
The AI boom is creating winners far beyond the companies making the models and chips. The networks that carry, secure and control all that new machine-generated traffic are becoming increasingly valuable infrastructure themselves.
JBizNews Desk | San Francisco
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