Why Cloudflare wants AI companies to pay for content

Equity

TechCrunch

Founders, Silicon Valley, Finance, Ipo, Vc, Technology, Business News, Startups, Business, Venture Capital, News, Stock Market, Entrepreneurship, Techcrunch

4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Cloudflare wants AI companies to pay up. The cloud infrastructure provider is launching a new experiment called Pay per Crawl that would let publishers charge AI firms every time their bots scrape a site, and it could reshape how content is accessed and monetized online. Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec and Max Zeff dig into Cloudflare’s big swing, why it’s a natural next step after a year of laying groundwork for bot-blocking tools, and whether the plan to sit at the center of a pay-for-content protocol is genius…or just wishful thinking. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: How ICEBlock, an app for anonymously reporting ICE sightings, went viral thanks to backlash from former prosecutor Pam Bondi, and is now one of the most-downloaded free iPhone apps in the U.S. Why Figma’s S-1 filing could set the stage for a blockbuster IPO, and what its 48% revenue growth says about demand for design tools What Grammarly's acquisition of Superhuman signals about its vision for the "agentic future" of productivity Tesla co-founder JB Straubel’s new venture and how the old EV battery-powered AI data centers might just challenge Tesla's own storage business Equity will be back next week, and for those of you in the U.S., enjoy the long holiday weekend! Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. We’d also like to thank TechCrunch’s audience development team. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	So this week, we had a classic example of the stricand effect, which is when you don't want to bring attention to something, but of course you do by
0:21.0	talking about how you don't want attention on it in regards to an app called ice block, not the
0:27.6	internal combustion engine, but the agency that handles immigration and has been quite controversial
0:33.9	lately. Do you know the story I'm talking about? I do. I do. I think this was when
0:38.4	U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi criticized this app that helps people report sightings of ICE agents.
0:46.4	I think there was another member of the Trump administration who said that this was
0:50.4	obstructing justice, this app. And then in the next day, it like shot to the top of the app store.
0:56.7	And it was total strays and effect in action.
0:59.5	Yeah, exactly.
1:00.4	So called it despicable, got tons of attention, now has driven an incredible rate of downloads.
1:08.4	And we'll see if it persists.
1:10.2	It's really interesting. We wrote about this.
1:12.2	And so you can see it in our show notes. Our cybersecurity editor, Zach Whitaker, made sure and
1:17.4	checked to see what kind of data was being captured. And interestingly, this is not an app
1:24.6	that is available on Android. It's only on iOS.
1:28.3	The app's creator, Joshua Aaron, said it's because Android would have required them to collect user data.
1:33.8	And Zach was able to confirm that this does not collect user data.
1:37.8	And as a result, it's become very popular indeed.
1:41.4	So we'll see if this persists.
1:43.0	My prediction is it will.
1:45.7	That tends to be the case with these things. You try to stomp it out and it just flares up.
1:50.3	Yeah. So welcome to Equity, TechRenches flagship podcast about the business of startups.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TechCrunch, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of TechCrunch and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.