Cloudflare says >50% of traffic now from bots as shares hit record

Cloudflare reported that in the second quarter more than half of the data flowing through its network—about 57%—originated from automated systems rather than human users, marking the first time machine traffic has become the majority. CEO Matthew Prince highlighted the milestone on the earnings call, noting it arrived months earlier than the company’s own forecast. The announcement sent the internet‑infrastructure firm’s shares to a record high of roughly $325, up about 8% on the day, as revenue rose 36% year‑over‑year to $696.1 million and the full‑year outlook was lifted to $2.864‑$2.870 billion.

While the non‑human traffic does not yet generate revenue, Cloudflare is expanding tools that let customers block or charge AI crawlers and is building a payment layer for machine‑to‑machine commerce. The company said that 52% of crawler requests were for AI training and that mixed‑purpose bots made up more than a third of activity, prompting marketers to reconsider how they measure website performance and advertising spend.