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Feb 19, 2026
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Cloudflare Acquires Human Native to Build Ethical AI Data Marketplace for Creator
NewDecoded
3 min read
Cloudflare Acquires Human Native to Build Ethical AI Data Marketplace for Creator
Cloudflare announced the acquisition of Human Native on January 15, 2026, marking a major shift in how the internet economy handles artificial intelligence. The connectivity cloud company plans to use this technology to help content creators prepare and price their data for AI developers. This move aims to replace unauthorized web scraping with a transparent marketplace for high quality training data.
Based in London, Human Native operates as a specialized data marketplace that connects creators with AI companies. The startup focuses on turning original creative work into structured, indexable information that is ready for machine learning. By integrating these tools, Cloudflare enables publishers to move beyond simply blocking bots to actually profiting from their digital assets.
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, noted that the goal is to build a sustainable economic model for the next phase of the internet. He explained that while the company previously focused on giving publishers tools to block access, the focus has now shifted to discovery and fair pricing. This strategy intends to protect the longevity of the open web by ensuring creators receive credit and compensation.
The acquisition brings deep technical expertise from veterans of DeepMind, Google, and Bloomberg. These specialists will help develop the infrastructure needed for AI developers to find and purchase reliable datasets through ethical channels. This helps mitigate legal risks for AI labs while providing a necessary revenue stream for media organizations and individual artists.
Human Native was founded in 2024 with backing from prominent venture capital firms like LocalGlobe and Mercuri. The founders believe that generative AI should move out of its early era of unregulated scraping. This partnership allows their vision of an equitable relationship between creators and developers to scale across Cloudflare's massive global network.
This acquisition signals the shift from a defensive approach for web publishers to a formalized AI data economy. Rather than endless lawsuits and mass bot-blocking, Cloudflare is positioning itself as the middleman for a legalized trade in information. By integrating its Pay Per Crawl feature with a structured marketplace, Cloudflare is essentially creating a stock exchange for the data that fuels large language models, forcing every website to either shut its doors or join a system where AI visits come with a price. This is a significant pivot from merely protecting content to actively brokering its sale.
