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Big Technology Podcast · Wednesday, September 2, 2026

Cloudflare CEO: AI Bots Now Outnumber Humans Online, Future of Web Uncertain

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince revealed that AI bots have surpassed human traffic on the internet, a milestone that occurred earlier than anticipated. He expressed concern over the potential strain on internet infrastructure and the changing dynamics for publishers and businesses.

personMatthew PrincecompanyCloudflare

The tape

3 quotes
Well, on the web, AI bots now outnumber humans.
Matthew Prince
So we have more AI traffic than human traffic and that's obviously changing the dynamics and the incentives for news publishers, information publishers, and of course small businesses. So what is going to happen to the web?
Matthew Prince
in May of of 2026, you won't believe it, but we now see that automated traffic has passed human traffic online for the first time in the history of the internet.
Matthew Prince
Heard on Big Technology Podcast — “Cloudflare CEO: We're Ready To Block Millions of Websites From AI — With Matthew Prince, published Wednesday, September 2, 2026. Heardvine summarizes and quotes with attribution and timestamps, and links to the original everywhere.
Transcribed via Gemini audio transcription · $0.06
Cloudflare CEO: AI Bots Now Outnumber Humans Online, Future of Web Uncertain — Heardvine