Cloudflare Bets on AI Payments with Launch of NetDollar Stablecoin

Cloudflare, a company best known for securing and accelerating internet traffic, has announced its boldest step yet into the digital finance world with the introduction of NetDollar, a US dollar-backed stablecoin designed for online payments. With this move, the firm is signaling its intention to become a central player in the emerging economy where artificial intelligence is increasingly conducting transactions on behalf of users and businesses.

For decades, the digital economy has been underpinned by advertising revenue, subscriptions, and traditional bank payments. Cloudflare’s leadership argues that such systems are not fit for an internet increasingly dominated by AI-driven services. As algorithms book flights, place grocery orders, and negotiate business contracts, the need for reliable and near-instant financial tools becomes urgent. NetDollar, the company insists, offers the flexibility and stability required to support this new reality.

In a press statement, Matthew Prince, Cloudflare’s co-founder and CEO, emphasized that the internet of the future will be built on micropayments and fractional transfers rather than banner ads or slow transfers across legacy banking rails. He described NetDollar as an enabler of “pay-per-use” transactions that directly reward creativity, originality, and innovation. The ultimate goal is to allow value to move seamlessly across borders, time zones, and autonomous platforms, ensuring that those producing content or services are compensated fairly and without friction.

Cloudflare envisions NetDollar as the currency of what it calls the “agentic web,” a term describing an ecosystem where autonomous AI systems act continuously in the background. A personal AI assistant could, for example, purchase a low-cost airline ticket the moment it becomes available, or a corporate AI system could trigger payment to a supplier upon verified delivery. These scenarios demand instant, secure, and borderless transfers that existing financial infrastructure cannot provide at scale.

The timing of this initiative reflects not just a shift in technology but also Cloudflare’s own financial momentum. The company currently boasts a market capitalization of $75.8 billion, with stock returns up more than 100 percent this year. Its second-quarter revenue of $512.3 million exceeded Wall Street forecasts, leading analysts at Citizens JMP to raise their target price to $250. Stifel and other firms have also reiterated their bullish outlook, citing the company’s 27 percent year-over-year revenue growth and profit margins of 76 percent.

By tying NetDollar directly to the US dollar, Cloudflare is attempting to bridge the stability of traditional finance with the agility of digital infrastructure. If widely adopted, the stablecoin could enable new business models less dependent on advertising, giving creators, developers, and AI firms a way to monetize services in real time. For a company that has long marketed itself as the backbone of a faster, safer internet, NetDollar represents an ambitious attempt to define how value itself circulates in the AI era.