Can Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince save the web from AI?

Cloudflare’s mission to remake the business of the web for the AI age Cloudflare 的使命：为人工智能时代重塑网络商业模式

by Nilay Patel | Sep 26, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC 作者：Nilay Patel | 2026年9月26日，世界标准时间下午2:00

Nilay Patel is editor-in-chief of The Verge, host of the Decoder podcast, and co-host of The Vergecast. Nilay Patel 是《The Verge》的总编辑，也是 Decoder 播客的主持人及 The Vergecast 的联合主持人。

Today, I’m talking with Matthew Prince, who is CEO of Cloudflare. This episode is part of a two-part series on the future of business. 今天，我将与 Cloudflare 的首席执行官 Matthew Prince 进行对话。本期节目是关于商业未来的两集系列节目之一。

Matthew last joined us on the show about two and a half years ago, at what we thought then was a wild pivot point for the internet — and now it turns out things are even wilder because of AI, and Matthew and Cloudflare are right at the center of it. Matthew 上次参加我们的节目大约是在两年半前，当时我们认为那是互联网的一个剧烈转折点——而现在事实证明，由于人工智能的出现，情况变得更加疯狂，而 Matthew 和 Cloudflare 正处于这一切的中心。

Cloudflare found in June that bots made up more than half of internet traffic. That number just keeps going up as more and more AI companies scrape more and more of the web, and now as more and more AI agents try and do things for people on the web. Cloudflare sits between websites and all those agents, and allows website owners some level of control: Owners can block all those AI tools, allow them, or, as you’ll hear, only allow those that might pay money for access. Cloudflare 在六月份发现，机器人流量已占互联网流量的一半以上。随着越来越多的 AI 公司抓取越来越多的网页，以及越来越多的 AI 代理试图在网上为人类处理事务，这个数字还在不断攀升。Cloudflare 位于网站和所有这些代理之间，为网站所有者提供了一定程度的控制权：所有者可以选择屏蔽所有 AI 工具、允许它们访问，或者正如你即将听到的那样，只允许那些愿意付费获取访问权限的工具通过。

So Matthew and I talked about how to control all these bots, what kind of mess they’re making of the web, and what kinds of information might be valuable in the future as some of the payment schemes come into focus. You’ll hear me ask pretty directly if some of the outcomes he’s describing are actually good — Matthew is a thoughtful guy, and his answer is something I’m still thinking about well after we had this conversation. 因此，我和 Matthew 讨论了如何控制这些机器人，它们正在给网络造成什么样的混乱，以及随着一些付费方案逐渐明朗，未来什么样的信息可能具有价值。你会听到我非常直接地询问他所描述的一些结果是否真的有益——Matthew 是一个深思熟虑的人，他的回答让我在这场对话结束后依然久久不能平静。

AI is also upending everything inside of Cloudflare. Earlier this year, the company laid off more than a thousand people — 20 percent of the company — and then Matthew wrote an op-ed about that decision that ran in the Wall Street Journal under the headline, “How I choose which Cloudflare employees to replace with AI.” That’s pure Decoder bait in every single dimension: AI, big controversial decisions, and org charts, all in one. 人工智能也在颠覆 Cloudflare 内部的一切。今年早些时候，该公司裁员超过一千人，占公司总人数的 20%。随后，Matthew 就这一决定在《华尔街日报》上发表了一篇专栏文章，标题为《我是如何选择哪些 Cloudflare 员工该被 AI 取代的》。这在各个维度上都是典型的“Decoder 诱饵”：人工智能、重大的争议性决策以及组织架构调整，全都汇集在了一起。

Okay: Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare. Here we go. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 好了：Cloudflare 首席执行官 Matthew Prince。让我们开始吧。本次采访为篇幅和清晰度经过了轻微编辑。

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Matthew Prince, you’re the cofounder and CEO of Cloudflare. Welcome back to Decoder. Matthew Prince，你是 Cloudflare 的联合创始人兼首席执行官。欢迎回到 Decoder。

Thanks for having me. 谢谢邀请。

I’m really excited to talk to you again. It’s been about two years since you were on the show. I was just looking back over that episode and I said something to you like, “it’s a momentous time for the internet.” And I was not even close. It’s now an even more momentous time for the internet. 我很高兴能再次与你交谈。距离你上次上节目已经过去大约两年了。我刚才回顾了那期节目，当时我对你说过类似“这是互联网的关键时刻”的话。但我当时说得还不够。现在对互联网来说，这是一个更加关键的时刻。

You are at the forefront of rebooting how companies work with AI. That is the most Decoder bait of all time. I want to talk about bots and the internet and publishers and Google and all the things that you are in the middle of. But let’s start at the very beginning. Cloudflare is a complicated, important company. The last time you were on the show, you said, “Cloudflare is a service that makes the internet faster and protects it from bad guys.” Is that still how you would describe what Cloudflare does? 你正处于重塑企业如何利用人工智能的前沿。这绝对是史上最吸引 Decoder 的话题。我想谈谈机器人、互联网、出版商、谷歌以及所有你身处其中的事物。但让我们从头开始。Cloudflare 是一家复杂且重要的公司。你上次上节目时说：“Cloudflare 是一项让互联网更快并保护它免受坏人侵害的服务。”你现在还会这样描述 Cloudflare 的工作吗？

That’s usually what I say when I’m trying to answer a question at a cocktail party and I don’t want to talk to the person any more. What I say if I’m interested in talking to the person more is that Cloudflare is trying to rebuild the internet the way it should have been built from the beginning if we knew how important it was going to be. 这通常是我在鸡尾酒会上想回答问题，但又不想再和对方多聊时说的话。如果我有兴趣和对方深入交流，我会说：Cloudflare 正在尝试以互联网最初就应该被构建的方式来重建它——如果我们当时就知道它会变得如此重要的话。

We run a giant network. We’re in over 350 cities worldwide, literally thousands of data centers. We have equipment running in all those places, and then we do a handful of things. If you’re trying to put an application or content online, we make sure that it’s safe. If you’re a person or an employee online, we make sure that wherever you go online is safe. We help give people the ability to write applications that can scale to an entire internet audience and run on the infrastructure that we have. That’s the fastest-growing part of our business. 我们运营着一个庞大的网络。我们在全球 350 多个城市拥有数千个数据中心。我们在所有这些地方都有运行的设备，并处理几类核心事务。如果你想把应用程序或内容发布到网上，我们确保它是安全的。如果你是一个上网的个人或员工，我们确保你上网所到之处都是安全的。我们帮助人们编写能够扩展到整个互联网受众并运行在我们基础设施上的应用程序。这是我们业务中增长最快的部分。

We’ve recently started to think about how the business model of the internet is changing dramatically and we’re trying to help shape what that future business model of the internet looks like and make it as healthy as possible. 我们最近开始思考互联网的商业模式正在发生怎样的剧烈变化，我们正试图帮助塑造互联网未来的商业模式，并使其尽可能健康。

Can I connect the dots between the business model of the internet, how the internet should have worked, and Cloudflare trying to build the internet as it should have been? 我能把互联网的商业模式、互联网本应如何运作，以及 Cloudflare 试图构建“本应如此”的互联网这几点联系起来吗？

That is different than, “Cloudflare protects from bad guys.” I will note that’s what you said to me last time, which now makes me feel like you don’t want to talk to me at the cocktail party, but that’s fine. That’s a shift. It’s just a notable shift. The business model of the internet has dramatically changed because of AI, because of bot traffic, because of AI scrapers, the whole thing. Describe what you think the business model of the internet is right now and what it should be. 这与“Cloudflare 保护互联网免受坏人侵害”确实不同。我注意到你上次就是这么对我说的，这让我觉得你当时在鸡尾酒会上不想跟我多聊，不过没关系。这是一种转变，一种显著的转变。由于人工智能、机器人流量、AI 抓取工具等因素，互联网的商业模式已经发生了剧烈变化。请描述一下你认为现在的互联网商业模式是什么，以及它应该是什么样的。

For at least the last at least 30 years, the business model of the internet has been advertising. It’s not the entire business model of the internet, but it’s really driven all of the growth of the web and built what we all enjoy today, which really is a miracle. 至少在过去 30 年里，互联网的商业模式一直是广告。虽然这并非互联网商业模式的全部，但它确实推动了网络的所有增长，并构建了我们今天所享受的一切，这确实是一个奇迹。

The company that is responsible for that more than any other is Google, which for the last 28 years has really defined that. We all think about it for search, but they really built out all of the ecosystem around advertising online. They bought DoubleClick, they built things like Google Analytics that let you actually see who was coming to your property. It really is the hero of what I call the first generation of the internet and the first generation of the web. 对此贡献最大的公司是谷歌，在过去 28 年里，它真正定义了这一点。我们都认为谷歌是做搜索的，但他们实际上构建了围绕在线广告的整个生态系统。他们收购了 DoubleClick，开发了 Google Analytics 等工具，让你能够真正看到是谁访问了你的网站。它确实是我所称的“第一代互联网”和“第一代网络”的英雄。

What’s changing though, very quickly, is who is actually using the web, or what is using the web. Last November I was at Web Summit, the big European tech event, and I was asked… 然而，正在迅速改变的是：究竟是谁在使用网络，或者说是什么在使用网络。去年 11 月，我在欧洲大型科技盛会 Web Summit 上，当时有人问我……