‘Humans will be a rounding error on the internet’ says Cloudflare exec

Cloudflare's chief financial officer, Thomas Seifert, has expressed a bold prediction that human-generated internet traffic will become negligible by 2027, forming just a rounding error in the vast realm of machine-generated traffic. This prediction, initially forecasted in 2026 but proven accurate, stems from ongoing trends of accelerating machine-generated traffic.

Seifert believes that non-human traffic could soar up to 1,000 times the volume of human-generated traffic within five years. The driving force behind this surge in machine-made traffic is attributed to advancements in Artificial Intelligence. Seifert emphasized the need for increased efficiency in handling such a massive influx of non-human traffic, with Cloudflare's services proposed as an efficient solution.

He also highlighted the potential increase in security threats due to the burgeoning volume of machine-generated traffic. Despite the company's financial performance, which saw a 36% year-over-year revenue increase to $696 million in Q2, losses more than tripled to $205.7 million. However, investors seem undeterred due to Cloudflare's substantial revenue growth and its record deals with large corporations.

The company has also reported a low planned capital expenditure of 14-15% of its forecasted revenue, which is minimal compared to the billions being invested in AI infrastructure by its competitors. Cloudflare CEO, Matthew Prince, pointed out the inefficiency of traditional cloud service providers, who merely lease out commodity servers, urging for a more efficient use of resources.

He also emphasized Cloudflare's focus on serverless offerings, which are performing exceptionally well, and the company's shares rose by 16% in after-hours trading, marking a 68% increase in year-to-date performance.