AI agents are a ‘bane’ for some website operators, says Cloudflare
CEO says sovereigns probably exploited PHP2SHELL ages ago, and suggests containers are dead
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince warned that AI agents are causing issues for some website operators, calling them a "bane" to businesses. Prince suggested that nation-state actors and criminals may have exploited the PHP2SHELL vulnerability before it was disclosed, as they had been in the wild for years. He expressed concern over the potential cost to businesses when AI agents scour the internet, pulling down menus from thousands of websites without providing any benefit.
Prince also mentioned that containers might become a casualty of the agentic age, as they struggle to keep up with the cost-effective demands of agentic traffic. He proposed Cloudflare's serverless "Workers" service as an alternative and highlighted the growing demand for products that can block, mitigate, or monetize agentic traffic.
Cloudflare's revenue grew by 39% year-over-year, reaching $782.5 million in quarterly revenue. Prince remains optimistic about the future, attributing it to the increasing importance of security, as Cloudflare is among the first to receive early disclosure of new vulnerabilities and remediate them before public release.
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