Matthew Prince won't back down.
The co-founder and chief executive of cybersecurity Cloudflare (NET) warned that search traffic referrals have plummeted as people increasingly rely on artificial intelligence summaries to answer their queries, forcing many publishers to reevaluate their business models.
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While search engines and AI chatbots include links to original sources, publishers can only derive advertising revenue if readers click through.
“The future of the web is going to be more and more like AI, and that means that people are going to be reading the summaries of your content, not the original content,” Prince told Axios last month.
Early this month, Cloudflare announced that it had become the first Internet infrastructure provider to block AI crawlers accessing content without permission or compensation, by default.
Prince noted in a statement that “original content is what makes the Internet one of the greatest inventions in the last century, and it's essential that creators continue making it.”
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Cloudflare CEO goes to war every single day
If the Internet is going to survive the age of AI, he said, “we need to give publishers the control they deserve and build a new economic model that works for everyone – creators, consumers, tomorrow’s AI founders, and the future of the web itself.”
And Prince is confident his company is up to the challenge.
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“I go to war every single day with the Chinese government, the Russian government, the Iranians, the North Koreans, probably Americans, the Israelis, all of them who are trying to hack into our customer sites,” he declared. “And you're telling me, I can't stop some nerd with a C-corporation in Palo Alto?”
Cloudflare recently issued a the 22nd edition of its report on Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which are malicious attempts to overwhelm a web property with traffic to disrupt its normal operations.
June was the busiest month for DDoS attacks during the second quarter, the company said, accounting for nearly 38% of all observed activity.
One notable target was an independent Eastern European news outlet protected by Cloudflare, which reported being attacked following its coverage of a local Pride parade during LGBTQ Pride Month.
“We’ve just crossed halfway through 2025, and so far Cloudflare has already blocked 27.8 million DDoS attacks, equivalent to 130% of all the DDoS attacks we blocked in the full calendar year 2024,” the company said.
Companies are understandably concerned about protecting themselves and global cybersecurity spending is expected to grow by 12.2% this year, according to the IDC Worldwide Security Spending Guide
The increasing complexity and frequency of cyberthreats — accelerated by generative AI and AI in general — are driving organizations worldwide to adopt more advanced defensive measures, IDC said.
As a result, security spending is expected to see sustained growth throughout the 2023–2028 forecast period, reaching $377 billion in 2028.
Analyst says cybersecurity will remain robust
Cloudflare is slated to report second-quarter results on July 31 and investment firms have cited corporate cybersecurity spending as a factor for adjusting their price targets for the company's shares.
The San Francisco-based group's stock has climbed 86% this year and shares have soared 157% from this time in 2024.
Related: Analyst reboots Cloudflare stock price target on key security issue
Citizens JMP raised the firm's price target on Cloudflare to $225 from $180 and kept an outperform rating on the shares, according to The Fly.
The firm noted positive data points heading into the earnings report, including positive attainment data, and continues to view Cloudflare as the earliest beneficiary of the AI opportunity in its coverage universe.
Jefferies raised the firm's price target on Cloudflare to $200 from $150 and kept a hold rating on the shares.
The firm said that it believes cybersecurity spend will remain “robust” and continue to hold a “steady percentage” of software budgets in the coming years.
Jefferies said that it is keeping a favorable view on security for the long-term saying it has taken on greater importance.
Mizuho raised the firm's price target on Cloudflare to $220 from $155 and kept an outperform rating on the shares as part of a second-quarter earnings preview for the software group.
The firm said its second quarter checks were good overall, with cybersecurity demand “generally healthy” and AI adoption “very strong.
However, the fundamental upside in the quarter could be constrained, as several contacts noted a slightly higher-than expected number of deal push-outs, where a deal's expected close date is pushed to a later time.
Mizuho said its favorite stocks to own ahead of the print are cybersecurity company CyberArk (CYBR) and software giant Microsoft (MSFT) .
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