Acquisition aims to build a fair, sustainable Internet economy where creators can monetize AI‑ready content and developers access trusted data
Cloudflare has acquired Human Native, an AI data marketplace connecting creators and AI developers, in a move designed to reshape how high‑quality content is discovered, priced and licensed in the AI era. Announced on 16 January 2025, the acquisition is set to accelerate Cloudflare’s vision for a fair, transparent digital economy where creators can transform their work into monetizable, AI‑ready data.
Human Native enables creators, publishers and rights holders to structure their content so that AI companies can access, evaluate and purchase it through verified and ethically sourced channels. With AI systems increasingly dependent on vast amounts of high-quality training and inference data, Cloudflare says the acquisition marks a critical step toward defining “a new business model for the Internet.”
“Content creators deserve full control over their work, whether they want to write for humans or optimize for AI. This acquisition accelerates our vision for a transparent, sustainable AI‑driven Internet.”
— Matthew Prince, Co‑founder & CEO, Cloudflare
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said creators must be empowered with the tools to control how their content is used. “Last year we helped publishers decide which bots could access their content. The real goal has always been to build an economic model that rewards creators fairly and sustains an open Internet,” he said.
Founded in 2024 and backed by LocalGlobe and Mercuri, Human Native brings deep experience across technology and media, with team members from DeepMind, Google, Figma and Bloomberg. Their expertise will help Cloudflare build infrastructure that allows AI developers to efficiently discover and license authoritative data while enabling content owners to earn value from their work.
“We founded Human Native to get Generative AI out of its Napster era and ensure creators receive control, compensation and credit.”
— Dr. James Smith, Co‑founder & CEO, Human Native
Dr. James Smith, CEO of Human Native, said the alignment between the two companies was immediate. “Creators deserve compensation, control and credit. Cloudflare shares our mission — and has the scale to make it real.”
Investors LocalGlobe and Mercuri highlighted the acquisition as a pivotal step toward ethical AI development supported by transparent data sourcing.
The move reinforces Cloudflare’s commitment to supporting responsible AI growth while creating new economic opportunities for creators in the emerging AI‑powered Internet.