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Cloudflare has acquired Human Native, an AI data marketplace founded in 2024 that connects content creators with AI developers. The acquisition aims to accelerate Cloudflare’s vision for a sustainable AI-driven Internet economy by enabling creators to prepare, price, and monetize their content transparently while providing AI companies with easier access to high-quality, ethically sourced data.
The deal arrives as the AI industry grapples with sourcing high-quality, ethically obtained data amid rising demand from training and inference needs. Content creators face increasing pressure to define their stance on AI usage, and Cloudflare positions itself to offer flexible, creator-centric solutions that support all approaches while fostering responsible AI progress.
Human Native’s technology enables content to be structured, discovered, and transacted in ways that benefit both creators and AI developers. By integrating this capability, Cloudflare aims to create streamlined mechanisms for fair value exchange, ensuring creators receive compensation and attribution when their work powers AI products. This builds on Cloudflare’s previous initiatives, such as bot management controls, to establish a balanced framework where content remains viable and rewarding in an AI-augmented Internet.
The Human Native team’s background in AI, tech, and media strengthens Cloudflare’s ability to deliver scalable, enterprise-grade tools. Their focus on equitable relationships between creators and AI companies aligns closely with Cloudflare’s broader mission to build a better, more sustainable Internet.
“Content creators deserve full control over their work, whether they want to write for humans or optimize for AI,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder & 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.”
“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 & 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.”
“High quality data is the key that unlocks real differentiation in AI,” said Ziv Reichert, partner at LocalGlobe. “James and Jack Galilee have built the infrastructure that enables AI teams to discover and access valuable data across the internet, while allowing data owners to surface, price, and monetize it seamlessly. We’re incredibly excited to see them continue this mission with Cloudflare.”
“At Mercuri, we invest at the intersection of media and AI, and Human Native has embodied this thesis from the outset,” said Alan Hudson, Founding General Partner, Mercuri. “When we first invested two years ago, we believed there was a clear need to reward creators fairly for their data and to enable AI to progress with high-quality, ethically sourced data. Our conviction around these principles have only grown stronger in today's market. We are now excited to see how the Human Native team continues on this mission in partnership with Cloudflare.”
To learn more about the acquisition and Cloudflare’s evolving tools for creators in the AI era, refer to the official blog announcement.
About Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc. is the leading connectivity cloud company on a mission to help build a better Internet. It empowers organizations to make their employees, applications and networks faster and more secure everywhere, while reducing complexity and cost. Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud delivers the most full-featured, unified platform of cloud-native products and developer tools, so any organization can gain the control they need to work, develop, and accelerate their business. Powered by one of the world’s largest and most interconnected networks, Cloudflare blocks billions of threats online for its customers every day. It is trusted by millions of organizations – from the largest brands to entrepreneurs and small businesses to nonprofits, humanitarian groups, and governments across the globe.
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