Prince says agents will outnumber humans online 1,000 to 1 sooner than five years, and container-based clouds can't keep up cost-effectively.
I predicted last quarter that within five years, agents would outnumber humans online 1,000 to 1. A quarter later, I'll take the under on the timing of that bet based on everything we're seeing today. The container-based architecture of the hyperscalers and neoclouds just can't keep up in a cost-effective way with the new agentic paradigms of today.
All statements by Matthew Prince ›
Prince positions Cloudflare as the first agentic cloud, distinct from neoclouds and hyperscalers, with developers flocking to it.
Cloudflare isn't a neocloud. We're also not, as some of you have called us, the fourth public cloud. We're something different. We're the first agentic cloud, and developers are flocking to us to build the agentic AI future.
Prince warns a wave of AI-discovered vulnerabilities will hurt for about two years, though the internet is becoming safer.
It's coming, and it's going to be bad, and it's going to be bad for, I think, two years. But the good news is, we're finding the monsters, we're cleaning them up, and the internet is actually getting safer.
Prince says CISOs are panicking and the worst of the vulnerability wave is not yet over.
I think right now what CISOs are doing is panic. It feels like the sky is falling. Again, I think everyone is sort of holding their breath and saying, "Hopefully the worst of it's over." I know for a fact the worst of it is not over.
Prince expects agent-era micropayment business models (Act 4) to become Cloudflare's largest business within ten years.
I don't know exactly how long it will be before it turns into major sources of revenue, but if you look out in the more distant horizon, if you look 10 years out, I would imagine that this becomes the largest part of Cloudflare's business.
Prince argues agents must compensate content creators because agent traffic requires massive infrastructure.
if agents are going to be 1,000 times human traffic online, that's going to require more bandwidth, that's going to require more servers, that's going to require more things to actually power it, and someone has to pay for it. It can't be a free ride for all the agents that are out there.