New integration and support for open standards including Agent Name Service (ANS) and Web Bot Auth will provide transparency and trust for the AI era

Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET), the leading connectivity cloud company, and GoDaddy (NYSE:GDDY), global leader in domains and tech for small businesses, today announced a strategic partnership to help give website owners and AI developers transparency and control over how their content is used by AI, while also supporting standards to better identify AI agents. Together, the companies aim to help bring identity, trust, and access to the agentic open web.

The Internet is currently undergoing a fundamental shift, expanding from a web of pages designed for humans to a web that is also designed to support agents acting on behalf of humans. Without clear standards and tools, this transition risks overwhelming website owners, including small businesses and content creators, with unidentifiable and potentially malicious bot traffic. There needs to be a way to ensure that website owners have the tools to easily identify, manage, and trust AI traffic.

Visibility and Control for AI Crawlers

Starting today, GoDaddy will integrate Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control into its website hosting platform, helping website owners, including small businesses and creators, globally gain visibility and control over how automated AI-powered crawlers access their website content. This helps website owners manage which AI crawlers can collect their information while helping keep their site protected.

Identity and Transparency for AI Agents

Beyond just controlling crawls to a site, the industry needs standardized ways to verify who operates an agent and what an agent is allowed to do. However, enforcing consistent identification methods for bots and agents that want to interact with web applications in a safe manner is a more nuanced problem. ANS is a global open standard introduced by GoDaddy that is designed to support consistent naming, verification, and discovery for AI agents across systems, using proven open standards, domain name system (DNS), and public key infrastructure (PKI). ANS enables website owners to distinguish legitimate AI agents from unidentified AI agents, including malicious impersonators, on the open web.

Cloudflare is committed to a transparent agentic web and supports ANS and the development of a broad range of verifiable agent identity standards. In 2025, Cloudflare also introduced Web Bot Auth as a new method of using cryptography to verify bot and agent traffic, as well as a Signature Agent Card to help agent developers transparently share their agent's identity and purpose. With an open ecosystem of standards and methods for identifying agents, the agentic web can evolve with transparency built in by default.

Together, Cloudflare and GoDaddy aim to provide the technical architecture to move into the agentic web era and help to:

Enforce a permission-based model for the agentic web: GoDaddy is integrating Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control directly into its hosting experience. This allows any website owner to set their own terms—choosing to allow, block, or signal that payment is required—protecting the value of their content.
Build trust and transparency into AI-native commerce: Identifying a bot is no longer enough; we must enable them to transact. By supporting ANS and Web Bot Auth, Cloudflare and GoDaddy are providing the verifiable identity layer needed for a functional digital marketplace. This ensures that when an agent makes a request—whether for a data query or an autonomous purchase—its identity is cryptographically signed, creating the trust necessary for a sustainable value exchange.
Secure a fair value exchange in the Answer Engine era: As the Internet shifts from search-and-click to AI-generated answers, the traditional traffic-based business model is breaking. This partnership provides one technical solution to this economic challenge. By combining granular audit logs with transparent agent identity, GoDaddy and Cloudflare are helping enable an ecosystem where human-generated content remains the lifeblood of the web but is protected and compensated in an AI-first world.

"The Internet is evolving into a high-velocity, AI-driven ecosystem, and that requires a new kind of transparent infrastructure," said Stephanie Cohen, Chief Strategy Officer at Cloudflare. "By putting tools like AI Crawl Control and open standards into the hands of website owners, we are providing essential underpinnings for a new Internet business model. We want to ensure that every creator has the tools to verify who is interacting with their site, while giving legitimate AI agents a secure, transparent way to participate in a thriving open web."

"By working with Cloudflare on AI Crawl Control and championing the Agent Name Service, an open standard giving every agent a verifiable identity built on DNS, we are providing our customers the transparency they need to thrive in an AI-first world," said GoDaddy Chief Strategy Officer, Jared Sine. "We move at the speed of the Internet, and we're working with the broader industry to ensure the agentic open web does too."

To learn more, check out the following resources:

About Cloudflare

Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) is the leading connectivity cloud company. It empowers organizations to make their employees, applications and networks faster and more secure everywhere, while reducing complexity and cost. Cloudflare's connectivity cloud delivers the most full-featured, unified platform of cloud-native products and developer tools, so any organization can gain the control they need to work, develop, and accelerate their business.

Powered by one of the world's largest and most interconnected networks, Cloudflare blocks billions of threats online for its customers every day. It is trusted by millions of organizations – from the largest brands to entrepreneurs and small businesses to nonprofits, humanitarian groups, and governments across the globe.

Learn more about Cloudflare's connectivity cloud at cloudflare.com/connectivity-cloud. Learn more about the latest Internet trends and insights at https://radar.cloudflare.com.

About GoDaddy

GoDaddy, the world's largest domain name registrar, helps millions of entrepreneurs globally start, grow, and scale their businesses. People come to GoDaddy to name their idea, build a website and logo, sell their products and services and accept payments. GoDaddy Airo®, the company's AI-powered experience, makes growing a small business faster and easier by helping them to get their idea online in minutes, drive traffic and boost sales. GoDaddy's expert guides are available 24/7 to provide assistance. To learn more about the company, visit www.GoDaddy.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, which statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as "may," "will," "should," "expect," "explore," "plan," "anticipate," "could," "intend," "target," "project," "contemplate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," or "continue," or the negative of these words, or other similar terms or expressions that concern Cloudflare's expectations, strategy, plans, or intentions. However, not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Forward-looking statements expressed or implied in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the capabilities and effectiveness of Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control and Cloudflare's other products and technology, the benefits to Cloudflare's customers from using Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control and Cloudflare's other products and technology, Cloudflare's partnership with GoDaddy and the potential resulting benefits to Cloudflare customers, the potential opportunity for Cloudflare to attract additional customers and to expand sales to existing customers through Cloudflare's partnership with GoDaddy, Cloudflare's technological development, future operations, growth, initiatives, or strategies, and comments made by Cloudflare's Chief Strategy Officer and others. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including but not limited to, risks detailed in Cloudflare's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including Cloudflare's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on February 26, 2026, as well as other filings that Cloudflare may make from time to time with the SEC.

The forward-looking statements made in this press release relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made. Cloudflare undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made in this press release to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law. Cloudflare may not actually achieve the plans, intentions, or expectations disclosed in Cloudflare's forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on Cloudflare's forward-looking statements.

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Cloudflare

Daniella Vallurupalli

press@cloudflare.com

GoDaddy

Nick Fuller

pr@godaddy.com

Cloudflare and GoDaddy Partner to Help Enable an Open Agentic Web