The acquisition is aimed to make content discovery and access for AI developers easier and faster, according to the company.
- The deal will also help creators and publishers optimize how their data can be surfaced to AI companies that are willing to pay.
- The company did not disclose details of the deal value or the timeline.
- Cloudflare is expected to announce its fourth quarter 2025 results on Feb. 10, 2026.
Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare, Inc. (NET) announced on Thursday that it will acquire Human Native, an AI data marketplace, in a push to transform content into high-quality, AI-ready data.
The company did not disclose details of the deal value or the timeline.
The acquisition is aimed to make content discovery and access for AI developers easier and faster, and also help creators and publishers optimize how their data can be surfaced to AI companies that are willing to pay, the company said.
Human Native will help Cloudflare build the tools needed to prepare content so AI developers “can find, access, and purchase reliable high-quality data through fair and transparent channels,” according to the company.
Shares of NET climbed 0.3% in Thursday’s after-market trading.
Leadership Commentary
Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare said that content creators deserve full control over their work, irrespective of whether they want to write for humans or optimize for AI.
“Last year we gave publishers and creators the tools to control which bots can access their content, but the real goal has always been to help create a new economic model that actually works for the next phase of the Internet,” he said.
The Human Native acquisition is expected to help the company accelerate the next phase, to build content discovery, pricing, and purchase tools that promote transparency. “This acquisition is about building the tools needed to protect the longevity of the open internet,” he added.
“We started Human Native with the goal of getting Generative AI out of its Napster era. We believe that creators should have control, compensation and credit when their work is used to power AI products, ensuring equitable compensation for rights holders while enabling responsible AI development,” said Dr. James Smith, co-founder and CEO of Human Native.
Company Updates
Last year, Cloudflare launched AI Crawl Control, a product that allows customers to restrict and or monetize data-scraping bots. The company added the feature as well as bot management into its free service package for organisations.
In its Fifth Annual Impact Report, the company noted a surge in cyber threats against public interest groups, election bodies and media outlets and said that it had blocked nearly 10 billion cyber attacks each month for vulnerable organisations in 2025 and stopped 200 million attacks against election infrastructure.
In December last year, the company expanded its partnership with JD Cloud that would reduce latency for its AI inference workloads by up to 80%.
Cloudflare is expected to announce its fourth quarter 2025 results on Feb. 10, 2026.
How Did Stocktwits Users React?
On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around NET stock slipped from ‘extremely bullish’ to ‘bullish’ territory over the past 24 hours amid ‘high’ message volumes.
NET shares have climbed over 60% in the past year.
For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.<
