Cloudflare announced on January 15, 2025, that it has acquired Human Native, a UK-based startup that helps creators sell their content to AI companies. This deal addresses a growing concern: AI systems often scrape content from the web without paying the people who created it. Human Native built a marketplace where creators can license their work to AI developers who need high-quality training data. Retained earnings are often used by companies to fund acquisitions and growth, making them relevant when assessing strategic deals retained earnings.
Cloudflare’s Human Native acquisition tackles a critical issue: ensuring creators get paid when AI companies use their work as training data.
Founded in 2024 and backed by investors LocalGlobe and Mercuri, Human Native specializes in transforming videos, images, and other multimedia into structured data that AI systems can actually use. The company’s mission centers on building fair relationships between creators and the AI industry. One UK video AI company achieved such strong results with Human Native’s data that it discarded its previous training material entirely.
Cloudflare sees this acquisition as a way to build new tools for the AI era. The company wants to help creators set prices for their content, control who accesses it, and get paid when AI companies use their work. Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s CEO, said content creators deserve full control over whether their work trains AI systems or simply reaches human readers. He believes this approach protects the long-term health of the open internet. Cloudflare aims to deliver solutions at internet scale through the combined teams and resources.
Dr. James Smith, Human Native’s CEO, compared the current AI landscape to the early days of Napster, when music flowed freely online without compensating artists. He hopes this acquisition moves generative AI beyond that chaotic phase toward a model where creators actually get paid. The Human Native team, which includes veterans from DeepMind, Google, Figma, and Bloomberg, will join Cloudflare to develop these creator-focused tools. The integration will enable transactions between content owners and AI companies under defined terms.
The acquisition follows other Cloudflare initiatives like AI Crawl Control, which lets website owners restrict AI bots from accessing their content. Cloudflare’s stock climbed 0.3% in after-market trading following the announcement. While financial terms remain undisclosed, the deal positions Cloudflare at the intersection of the creator economy and AI’s massive appetite for data, potentially reshaping how digital content gets valued and consumed.
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