Cloudflare: Or, How I Stopped Worrying and Loved the Agents

So, Cloudflare (NET +6.09%). I admit, I’d mostly been ignoring them. Not out of malice, just…well, my aunt Carol keeps emailing me links to articles about “the metaverse” and, frankly, it all feels a bit adjacent. And when I see a tech company doing really well, a little voice in my head starts whispering about inevitable disappointment. It’s a coping mechanism, really. But then the stock jumped. And I had to pay attention. It’s a burden, being financially literate.

Yesterday, it was up over 5%, apparently because they’re anticipating a future where…agents? Yes, agents. Not literary ones, sadly. AI-powered digital assistants. Apparently, these agents will be the new users of the internet, and Cloudflare is…the platform they run on. It’s a tidy analogy, I suppose, if you ignore the nagging feeling that we’re building a digital bureaucracy even more frustrating than the DMV.

Their fourth-quarter revenue was up 34% to $614.5 million. That’s a lot of money. I tried to visualize it. It’s roughly equivalent to the combined annual salaries of every substitute teacher I had in middle school. And those people were exhausted. CEO Matthew Prince, in a press release that I’m sure was painstakingly crafted by a team of marketing professionals, declared that this shift toward AI represents a fundamental replatforming of the internet. He’s not wrong, of course. Everything is being replatformed. My therapist keeps suggesting I “replatform” my entire life. It’s expensive.

They also reported an adjusted net income of $106.8 million, or $0.28 per share. Wall Street expected $0.27. It’s like they’re all playing a game of “beat the expectations.” It reminds me of Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother’s. Everyone pretends to like the cranberry sauce, just to make her happy.

Looking ahead to 2026, Cloudflare expects revenue to grow by roughly 29% to $2.79 billion. And adjusted earnings per share of $1.12. Prince, predictably, is confident. He says they were “built for this moment.” Which, let’s be honest, is what every CEO says when their stock is going up. It’s a comforting narrative. But I’m still suspicious. I’ve learned that in the tech world, “built for this moment” often translates to “please don’t look too closely at the underlying code.”

I’m not saying Cloudflare is a bad investment. Far from it. I’ve quietly added a few shares myself. But I’m approaching it with a healthy dose of cynicism. And a firm belief that even the most sophisticated AI agents will eventually succumb to the same frustrations as the rest of us: slow Wi-Fi, endless password resets, and the inescapable feeling that someone, somewhere, is trying to sell you something you don’t need.

2026-02-11 22:14

Read More