Cloudflare Transforms Original Content into High-Quality, AI-Ready Data with Acquisition of Human Native

Cloudflare, Inc., a leading connectivity cloud company, is acquiring Human Native, an AI data marketplace that connects creators and AI developers.

According to Cloudflare, the acquisition will make it easier and faster for AI developers to discover and access the content they need, and in turn help creators and publishers optimize how their data can be surfaced to AI companies willing to pay.

With the expertise from the Human Native team, Cloudflare will accelerate the build out of its vision for the AI-driven Internet economy, empowering creators to turn their existing content into indexable, valuable data as well as to effectively price and monetize it, the companies said.

Specifically, Human Native will help Cloudflare build the tools needed to prepare content so that AI developers can find, access, and purchase reliable high-quality data through fair and transparent channels.

“Content creators deserve full control over their work, whether they want to write for humans or optimize for AI,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “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. The Human Native team will help us accelerate the next phase, where we build the tools that allow content to be discovered, priced, and purchased through transparent channels. This acquisition is about building the tools needed to protect the longevity of the open Internet.”

Founded in 2024 and backed by top U.K. venture capitalists LocalGlobe and Mercuri, Human Native built its mission around fostering a more equitable and transparent relationship between content creators and AI companies.

“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. “Our discussions with Cloudflare, from Matthew to the entire team, have shown us that our values could not be more aligned, we believe in the same mission and together we will have the opportunity to deliver solutions at Internet scale.”

For more information about this news, visit www.cloudflare.com.