{"id":136206,"date":"2026-01-16T10:13:23","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T10:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/2026\/01\/16\/cloudflare-strengthens-content-offering-to-ai-companies-with-acquisition-of-human-native\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T10:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T10:22:14","slug":"cloudflare-strengthens-content-offering-to-ai-companies-with-acquisition-of-human-native","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/2026\/01\/16\/cloudflare-strengthens-content-offering-to-ai-companies-with-acquisition-of-human-native\/","title":{"rendered":"Cloudflare strengthens content offering to AI companies with acquisition of Human Native"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Acquisition will help create a new business model for the Internet by transforming original content into high-quality, AI-ready data and facilitating transparent value exchange in the AI era.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cloudflare, a leading connectivity cloud company, has announced it has acquired Human Native, an AI data marketplace that connects creators and AI developers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The acquisition will make it easier and faster for AI developers to discover and access the content they need, and in turn help creators and publishers optimise how their data can be surfaced to AI companies willing to pay. With the expertise from the Human Native team, Cloudflare will accelerate the build out of its vision for the AI-driven Internet economy, empowering creators to turn their existing content into indexable, valuable data as well as to effectively price and monetise it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The success of the AI industry relies heavily on access to high-quality content for training and inference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This poses a critical decision for content owners, who now need to determine their own AI strategies amidst the demand for their data \u2013 by blocking their content entirely, optimising their content specifically for AI, or offering their content for purchase for a fair price that reflects its value to AI users and society. Cloudflare is committed to providing creators with the tools that support all of these options. Specifically, Human Native will help Cloudflare build the tools needed to prepare content so that AI developers can find, access and purchase reliable high-quality data through fair and transparent channels.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cContent creators deserve full control over their work, whether they want to write for humans or optimise for AI,\u201d said Matthew Prince, Co-founder and CEO, Cloudflare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLast 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founded in 2024 and backed by UK venture capital firms LocalGlobe and Mercuri, Human Native built its mission around fostering a more equitable and transparent relationship between content creators and AI companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team brings deep expertise from across the technology and media sectors, including veterans from companies such as DeepMind, Google, Figma and Bloomberg, which will help Cloudflare deliver tools that enable creators to structure their content for fair, simple and streamlined AI consumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe started Human Native with the goal of getting Generative AI out of its Napster era,\u201d said Dr James Smith, Co-founder and CEO, Human Native.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe 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. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHigh quality data is the key that unlocks real differentiation in AI,\u201d said Ziv Reichert, Partner, LocalGlobe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJames 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 monetise it seamlessly. We\u2019re incredibly excited to see them continue this mission with Cloudflare.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt Mercuri, we invest at the intersection of media and AI, and Human Native has embodied this thesis from the outset,\u201d said Alan Hudson, Founding General Partner, Mercuri.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen 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 has only grown stronger in today\u2019s market. We are now excited to see how the Human Native team continues on this mission in partnership with Cloudflare.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Acquisition will help create a new business model for the Internet by transforming original content into high-quality, AI-ready data and facilitating transparent value exchange in the AI era. Cloudflare, a leading connectivity cloud company, has announced it has acquired Human Native, an AI data marketplace that connects creators and AI developers. The acquisition will make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":136207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[809],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-more-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136208,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136206\/revisions\/136208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}