Cloudflare’s 2026 Annual Founders’ Letter

This week Cloudflare celebrates our 16th birthday. Like many 16-year-olds, we find ourselves looking around at the world we grew up in and feeling caught between the past and future. Also like many 16-year-olds, we look at all the change in the world and sometimes see risk. But, on balance, we come out incredibly optimistic for what lies ahead. What drives our optimism and fear is a recognition that change involves disruption. 

The Internet is changing more today than at any point since Cloudflare launched back on September 27, 2010. Some of that change seems undoubtedly good. Some of it is upending the way we think the Internet works.

One significant change is the rate of growth of the web itself. From 2012 through 2025, the web plateaued and by some measures even shrank. That changed in mid-2025 when there was an explosion of new websites. The popular narrative is that growth has been driven by AI "slop." And, while there is some of that, that's not the majority of what we see.

Instead, AI has unleashed a new cohort of creators. Individuals with ideas but without coding skills who, aided by so-called "vibe coding" tools, are able to bring new creations to life. We're proud that the majority of these tools have Cloudflare's developer platform as their preferred deployment target. Technology at its best allows more people to express their creativity. We have front row seats to watch students around the world building apps to solve real-world problems. Startups with new business ideas getting built in record time. Today more than 7 million developers are building the future on Cloudflare’s developer platform.