"The 'Internet Gatekeeper' AI is killing it! AI agents have completely boosted Cloudflare's revenue in Q4 by 34%"

Cloudflare Inc. (NET.US), a cloud computing service company focused on "Connectivity Cloud" and dubbed the "Internet Gatekeeper," announced stronger-than-expected fourth quarter performance in the morning of Wednesday Beijing time. They also revealed their updated revenue outlook for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 and the full fiscal year 2026, surpassing analysts' expectations following the viral spread of OpenClaw (formerly known as Clawdbot, Moltbot). With the strong performance data and revenue outlook, Cloudflare's stock price surged significantly in after-hours trading, jumping over 14%. The stock price had previously soared more than 20% over three trading days when OpenClaw rapidly gained popularity worldwide in late January. In the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025, Cloudflare's total revenue increased by 34% to $6.145 billion as of December 31, exceeding analysts' average expectation of approximately $5.9 billion. The company's Non-GAAP earnings per share were around $0.28, a significant 47% year-over-year increase, higher than analysts' average estimate of $0.27. For the full fiscal year 2025, Cloudflare's total revenue grew by 30% to $21.679 billion. In terms of other core performance metrics for Q4, the company's GAAP gross profit was approximately $4.526 billion, with a gross margin of around 73.6%, compared to only about $3.513 billion in gross profit for the same period in fiscal year 2024. The company's Non-GAAP gross profit was about $4.602 billion, with a gross margin of around 74.9%, compared to only around $3.568 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024. The company's Non-GAAP operating profit for the fourth quarter was approximately $89.6 million, accounting for approximately 15% of total revenue, significantly higher than the approximately $67.2 million in the same period the previous year. Cloudflare's management provided a very robust revenue outlook for the first quarter and full fiscal year of 2026. For the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, the company anticipates total revenue in the range of $6.20 billion to $6.21 billion, with the midpoint of the revenue range significantly higher than analysts' recent average expectation of around $6.155 billion. For the full fiscal year 2026, Cloudflare's management expects total revenue in the range of $27.85 billion to $27.95 billion, with the midpoint of the range also higher than analysts' continuously upwardly revised average expectation of around $27.40 billion. In terms of Non-GAAP earnings per share expectations, the company's management provided a range of $0.23 for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, and $1.11 to $1.12 for the full fiscal year, which is in line with analyst expectations. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince emphasized in the performance statement that in the fourth quarter, the company completed the largest annual contract value transaction in its history, with an average value of $425 million per year. The new ACV total increased by nearly 50% year-over-year, marking the fastest growth since 2021. Prince stated, "The global shift to artificial intelligence and agent-based AI systems represents a fundamental reorganization of the Internet, driving strong demand for Cloudflare's Connectivity Cloud services and network security technology." Cloudflare is often referred to as the "Internet Gatekeeper" by many tech enthusiasts because it acts as a reverse proxy and traffic shaping point at the "entry layer" for a large number of websites and applications. Requests from users typically pass through Cloudflare's edge network before being forwarded to the origin site; before forwarding, Cloudflare performs caching, acceleration, TLS termination, WAF/Siasun Robot & Automation detection, DDoS mitigation, and access control - all "allow/block" actions take place at this technical layer. Therefore, from a technology stack perspective, it stands at the "gateway of websites" inspecting each request: allowing legitimate traffic and blocking malicious traffic, and can restrict or block certain automated accesses (crawlers/Siasun Robot & Automation) based on policies. Because of its network layer position of being "visible, controllable, and interceptable," some research and media discussions directly describe it as the "gatekeeper" of the Internet. Cloudflare focuses on the "Connectivity Cloud" positioning, unifying network acceleration (native CDN/Anycast network), security (WAF, DDoS, Zero Trust/SASE), and developer platforms (Workers serverless, KV/D1/Queues, R2 object storage, etc.) into a global edge network architecture, providing enterprises with "connectivity + protection + acceleration." This has been the company's clear external core narrative and product packaging logic in recent years. Different from cloud computing giants like Microsoft Corporation/Alphabet Inc. Class C, who lean towards central cloud/super-large-scale training and inference clusters, binding their own or ecosystem models and data platforms, Cloudflare leans towards edge+network+security integration, emphasizing "localizing inference, RAG, data access, and security control," using zero egress R2, edge vector library, AI Gateway, and Workers AI as a way to string "traffic-data-inference-security" together efficiently at the edge environment. It can fill the "last mile" of central cloud architecture and coexist with multi-cloud; more like an "Internet and edge operating system" in the AI inference era, using its global edge network/SASE/Zero Trust/serverless platform as an innovative architecture layer for AI applications to operate efficiently, low-cost, and securely in edge environments. OpenClaw completely ignites the "Internet Gatekeeper" Cloudflare Since the beginning of the year, the advancement of the Gemini 3 series (focusing on ecosystem/application continuous expansion) and the explosion of Claude and OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot, Moltbot) in "programming/Agent-based usage" have significantly accelerated the penetration depth and speed of generative AI and agent-based AI systems at the B-end (enterprise processes, development, customer service, analysis) and C-end (AI search/recommendation/consumer AI systems) levels. This objectively pushes the demand for computing power from "AI training systems" further towards a more extensive AI inference and online service, significantly boosting the trajectory of the global cloud computing IaaS infrastructure (AI GPU/AI ASIC accelerators, network, storage, large data engineering) and complete cloud computing PaaS AI developer ecosystem platform like Cloudflare. The recent popularity of OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot) has helped Cloudflare materialize the discourse of "Agentic Internet (Agent-based AI Internet workflow) = the infrastructure demand of the new generation." Even Cloudflare has started a new narrative by directly addressing the phenomenon of "everyone crazy about buying Mac mini to run Moltbot/OpenClaw," and introducing Moltworker to easily run on the Cloudflare developer platform. If an ordinary user tends to use the open-source OpenClaw to deploy "cloud-based agent-based AI workflow" (especially for public network, multi-user, multi-channel access), using the low-threshold and most efficient deployment route under Cloudflare with Moltworker, key links will deeply integrate multiple platform components of Cloudflare: using Worker as an API route and proxy at the entrance, running the gateway and integration of OpenClaw in Sandbox containers, using R2 for persistent storage, and using Cloudflare Access/Zero Trust for protection and management interface; at the same time, using AI Gateway to integrate with model providers like Anthropic, manage keys, usage/cost observability, and use Browser Rendering to productize the automation of browsers needed by the agents. These aspects that Cloudflare focuses on fundamentally correspond to the essential needs of the "agent system": orchestratable computing entry points, isolated execution environments, reliable storage, stable proxy layers for external models and tools, and security and auditing. The open-source community of OpenClaw leans more towards "local-first," which means deploying agent-based AI systems locally, emphasizing local gateway control interfaces, unified session/tool/event entry points, multiple channel inboxes, and multiple agent routes. This implies that it can run on one's own hardware system or self-hosted servers and does not necessarily require Cloudflare to be operational. Therefore, the reliance on Cloudflare subscriptions for "local deployment of OpenClaw" is significantly weaker - users can completely rely on other methods for domain name, reverse proxy, authentication, and persistence. However, "local deployment" does not mean "completely no need for Cloudflare": when you want to securely expose the local agents for remote use by yourself/team, or wish to unify model calls into a centralized cost and reliable governance layer, Cloudflare may still be a high-ROI option - for example, using AI Gateway for unified proxying for multiple models, logging, and rollback to avoid dispersing supplier keys everywhere; using Zero Trust/Access for enterprise-level access control and observability on management interfaces and APIs; combined with object storage/edge entrance to more stablely externalize "agent memory and assets". However, these are more like "additional enhancements/engineering reinforcement," not necessary prerequisites for running OpenClaw locally.