Cloudflare acquires Human Native

Cloudflare, Inc., the connectivity cloud company, has announced the acquisition of Human Native, an AI data marketplace that connects content creators with AI developers. The acquisition aims to simplify and accelerate how AI developers discover and access high-quality content, while enabling creators and publishers to better surface, price, and monetise their data with AI companies willing to pay for it.

With the addition of the Human Native team, Cloudflare will fast-track its vision for an AI-driven internet economy—one that empowers creators to transform existing content into indexable, valuable data assets and monetise them effectively. Human Native’s capabilities will support Cloudflare in building tools that prepare content for AI use, ensuring 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’re writing for people or optimising for AI,” said Matthew Prince, Co-Founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “Last year, we introduced tools that let publishers and creators decide which bots can access their content. Our broader goal has always been to help establish a new economic model that works for the next phase of the internet. The Human Native team will help us accelerate this next chapter—building tools that enable content to be discovered, priced, and purchased through transparent channels. This acquisition is about protecting the long-term future of the open internet.”

Founded in 2024 and backed by leading UK venture capital firms LocalGlobe and Mercuri, Human Native was built on the mission of creating a more equitable and transparent relationship between content creators and AI companies. The team brings deep expertise from across technology and media, with experience spanning organisations such as DeepMind, Google, Figma, and Bloomberg. This expertise will support Cloudflare in delivering tools that help creators structure their content for fair, simple, and scalable AI consumption.

“We founded Human Native to move generative AI beyond its ‘Napster era’,” said Dr. James Smith, Co-Founder and CEO of Human Native. “Creators should have control, credit, and compensation when their work is used to power AI products. Our conversations with Cloudflare showed a strong alignment in values and vision. Together, we now have the opportunity to deliver these solutions at true internet scale.”

“High-quality data is what drives real differentiation in AI,” said Ziv Reichert, Partner at LocalGlobe. “James and Jack Galilee have built infrastructure that allows AI teams to discover and access valuable data across the internet, while enabling data owners to surface, price, and monetise it seamlessly. We’re excited to see this mission continue with Cloudflare.”

Alan Hudson, Founding General Partner at Mercuri, added, “Human Native has embodied our investment thesis at the intersection of media and AI from the very beginning. When we invested, we believed there was a clear need to fairly reward creators and enable AI progress through ethically sourced, high-quality data. That conviction has only strengthened, and we’re excited to see the team advance this mission in partnership with Cloudflare.”