Cloudflare has blocked 416 billion requests from AI bots in the last six months

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince says in a new interview with Wired that the company has blocked more than 416 billion AI bot requests since July 1, 2025. It’s all part of the company’s initiative to help customers stop AI bots from scraping their content without payment.

According to Prince, AI represents a platform shift that will change the entire internet business model, and Cloudflare wants to protect an open ecosystem where both small and large players can operate on a level playing field.

He particularly criticizes Google for merging its search and AI crawlers. This means that anyone who blocks AI training also disappears from Google’s search index. Prince says Google is abusing its dominant position here.

“It’s almost like a Marvel movie — the hero of the last film becomes the villain of the next one,” Prince told Wired. “Google is the problem here. It is the company that is keeping us from going forward on the internet, and until we force them — or hopefully convince them — that they should play by the same rules as everyone else and split their crawlers up between search and AI, I think we’re going to have a hard time completely locking all the content down.”

Prince hopes that industry pressure and possible future regulation will lead to new and fairer business models where AI companies pay for licensed content instead of scraping it for free.