Cloudflare Acquires Human Native to Expand Content Access for AI Economy

As artificial intelligence reshapes how content is created, discovered, and monetized, infrastructure providers are moving quickly to redefine the economics of the open Internet. Cloudflare has taken a major step in that direction with its acquisition of Human Native, a move aimed at strengthening how AI companies access high quality content while giving creators greater control and monetization options. The Cloudflare acquisition of Human Native signals a strategic push to balance AI innovation with fair value exchange across the MarTech, media, and data ecosystems.

Cloudflare, Inc., a leading connectivity cloud company, announced that it has acquired Human Native, an AI data marketplace that connects content creators with AI developers. The deal is designed to make it easier for AI teams to discover and license reliable content while enabling publishers and creators to optimize, price, and surface their data to AI companies willing to pay for access. With the Human Native team joining Cloudflare, the company plans to accelerate its vision for an AI driven Internet economy where content becomes indexable, valuable, and monetizable at scale.

The demand for high quality content has become central to AI model training and inference. As a result, content owners are facing critical decisions about how their work should be used in AI systems. Some are choosing to block access entirely, while others are exploring ways to optimize content for AI or offer it commercially. Cloudflare has positioned itself as a platform that supports all of these approaches, and the acquisition of Human Native is intended to help build tools that enable fair and transparent content transactions.

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“Content creators deserve full control over their work, whether they want to write for humans or optimize for AI,” said Matthew Prince, co founder and 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.”

Founded in 2024, Human Native was backed by UK venture firms LocalGlobe and Mercuri and built its mission around creating a more equitable relationship between creators and AI companies. Its team brings experience from organizations including DeepMind, Google, Figma, and Bloomberg, expertise that Cloudflare plans to apply to structuring content for responsible and scalable AI use.

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“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 and CEO of Human Native.

Investors also highlighted the broader market importance of the move. “High quality data is the key that unlocks real differentiation in AI,” said Ziv Reichert, partner at LocalGlobe. Alan Hudson, Founding General Partner at Mercuri, added that the need to reward creators fairly while enabling ethical AI development has only intensified.

By integrating Human Native into its platform, Cloudflare is expanding its role beyond connectivity into content economics for AI. The Cloudflare acquisition of Human Native underscores a growing industry shift toward transparent data marketplaces that support both AI progress and sustainable creator revenue. As AI adoption accelerates, the deal positions Cloudflare to help shape how content is discovered, valued, and exchanged in the next phase of the Internet.