Cloudflare announced it has acquired Human Native, an AI data marketplace that connects creators and AI developers. 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.
The success of the AI industry relies heavily on access to high-quality content for training and inference. This poses a critical decision for content owners, who now need to determine their own AI strategies amidst the demand for their data – 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.
“Content creators deserve full control over their work, whether they want to write for humans or optimise for AI,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder & 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 and backed by top UK venture capitalists LocalGlobe and Mercuri, Human Native built its mission around fostering a more equitable and transparent relationship between content creators and AI companies. The team brings deep expertise from across the tech and media world, including veterans from companies like DeepMind, Google, Figma, and Bloomberg, that will help Cloudflare deliver tools that enable creators to structure their content for fair, simple, and streamlined AI consumption.
“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 & CEO of Human Native. “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.
“High quality data is the key that unlocks real differentiation in AI,” said Ziv Reichert, partner at LocalGlobe. “James 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’re incredibly excited to see them continue this mission with Cloudflare.”
“At Mercuri, we invest at the intersection of media and AI, and Human Native has embodied this thesis from the outset,” said Alan Hudson, Founding General Partner, Mercuri. “When 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 have only grown stronger in today’s market. We are now excited to see how the Human Native team continues on this mission in partnership with Cloudflare.”
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