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The full thread of our Cloudflare coverage — a running record of every development we've tracked, with the VC take on each.

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2
With a headline figure
Jul 1, 2026
Date

Coverage Timeline

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  1. AICloudflare's New Default Policy Forces AI Crawlers to Pay Publishers for Content→
  2. REGULATIONCloudflare's New Policy Forces AI Companies to Pay Publishers for Content, Starting September 15→

All Coverage

AIDefault policy shift

Cloudflare's New Default Policy Forces AI Crawlers to Pay Publishers for Content

Cloudflare announced on July 1 that starting September 15, its default settings will block 'mixed-use' AI crawlers from scraping ad-supported content on new customer sites and existing free-tier sites unless the AI company pays, building on its 2025 Pay Per Crawl marketplace with a new 'Pay Per Use' model that compensates publishers when their content actually drives value in an AI answer. CEO Matthew Prince cited crawl-to-referral ratios as extreme as 73,000-to-1 for Anthropic and 1,700-to-1 for OpenAI, versus 14-to-1 for Google.

Jul 1, 2026
REGULATIONDefault block Sep 15

Cloudflare's New Policy Forces AI Companies to Pay Publishers for Content, Starting September 15

Cloudflare announced on July 1 that starting September 15, 2026, its default settings will block 'mixed-use' AI crawlers — bots that serve both search and AI training or agent purposes — from any page carrying ads unless the AI company pays for access. The change applies to all free customers and new sites by default, and pairs with a new 'Pay Per Use' model that compensates publishers when their content actually drives value inside an AI answer, not just when it's crawled.

Jul 1, 2026