This Week in NET

In this episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé is joined by Cloudflare Senior Product Managers Korinne Alpers and Nikita Cano to recap all the announcements from Cloudflare’s 15th Birthday Week.

We cover AI, developer tools, security, performance, and how Cloudflare continues to give back to the Internet.

Highlights include:

 • AI & Security: Firewall for AI, Shadow AI protection, and Content Signals Policy.

 • For Creators & Nonprofits: Project Galileo expansion and new tools to control how AI uses content.

 • New Economy: NET Dollar and the x402 Foundation with Coinbase.

 • Developer Platform Upgrades: Cap’n Web RPC, VibeSDK, AI Search updates, PQC in WARP, and more.

 • Investing in the Future: 1,111 interns in 2026 plus new student and startup programs.

Full list of announcements: cloudflare.com/birthday-week

In this special 15th-anniversary episode of This Week in NET, we sit down with Cloudflare co-founders Michelle Zatlyn and Matthew Prince to revisit the early days — from a Harvard Business School project to launching at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010.

We talk about how culture takes shape, the technical vision of Lee Holloway, and pivotal moments that defined Cloudflare’s journey, as well as where the Internet is headed next.

Follow all Birthday Week 2025 announcements: cloudflare.com/birthday-week

Birthday Week is Cloudflare’s biggest innovation week — and this year is extra special as we celebrate our 15th birthday. Each year, we pause to reflect on our journey, celebrate the progress we’ve made, and look ahead to what’s next, all while staying true to our mission of helping build a better Internet.

In this episode of This Week in NET, João Tomé is joined by Nikita Cano to preview what’s coming in Birthday Week 2025: democratizing development, building a smarter and more open web, securing the future by default, the future of development on Cloudflare, and new performance and networking upgrades.

Don’t miss our special Sunday episode at ThisWeekinNET.com, featuring Cloudflare co-founders Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn reflecting on how Cloudflare came to be 15 years ago.

Follow all announcements at: https://cloudflare.com/birthday-week

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined by Kenny Johnson (Principal Product Manager) to review everything announced during the week — across Cloudflare One, Application Security, Workers AI, AI Gateway, and Radar.

Full list of blog posts at: cloudflare.com/ai-week

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined by Inanna Malick, Systems Engineer at Cloudflare, to talk about how she built a serverless version of a real-time social app that connects to the ATProto ecosystem — the protocol powering platforms like Bluesky.

Inanna walks us through her blog post and technical journey, showing how she used Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects, and the free tier of our Developer Platform to deploy an open, identity-owned, cryptographically verified social experience — all without running a server.

They discuss what makes ATProto different, how Statusphere works (the “Hello World” of open social apps), and what might be coming next in the world of decentralized platforms. Plus: how WebSockets and Durable Objects can be combined to create live, real-time updates — all running serverlessly.

Later in the episode, we check in with Keith Adler, Machine Learning Engineer, to hear how Cloudflare is making it easier to explore your data with Python notebooks powered by Marimo.

Mentioned blog posts:

We continue our 100th episode celebration of This Week in NET with a special look back at memorable moments from past guests and a quick rundown of the latest Cloudflare blog stories.

From Internet pioneers like Geoff Huston, to Cloudflare co-founders Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn, and leaders like Nicholas Thompson (The Atlantic) and Chris Anderson (TED), many Cloudflare experts, and John Graham-Cumming, that started this podcast with João Tomé in 2022. We revisit highlights from some of the most insightful conversations we’ve had over the past 3 years.

We also cover what’s new on the Cloudflare blog — including Jetflow, the White House AI Action Plan, the Q2 2025 DDoS report, and more.

Join us as we celebrate 100 episodes of This Week in NET.

In this special conversation, João Tomé sits down with John Graham-Cumming, Cloudflare’s former CTO and current board member, to look back at Cloudflare’s journey — from Universal SSL and Heartbleed to Workers, Radar, and what’s next for the Internet.

Topics & Timecodes:

Don’t miss Part 2 of our 100th episode celebration, featuring highlights from past guests and the latest Cloudflare blog stories.

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined by Will Allen, Cloudflare’s VP of Product Management, to discuss Pay-Per-Crawl and our new permission-based model for AI bots. These updates, launched on July 1, 2025 — what we call Content Independence Day — aim to reshape how AI models access and reward content, shifting from an opt-out to an opt-in approach. Cloudflare’s CEO, Matthew Prince, also appears in a video at the start, reflecting on Content Independence Day.

We explore how AI Overviews are changing the old “traffic for content” model and how Cloudflare is helping creators take control through tools like AI Audit. Plus: the future of trustworthy content, bot authentication, and the rise of a fairer content economy.

Send us your questions for a future episode on these topics at [email protected].

Check the mentioned blog posts here:

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined by Kenton Varda, Principal Engineer at Cloudflare, for a wide-ranging conversation about AI, code, and the evolution of Internet development.

Kenton shares how a real-world project shifted his view from AI skepticism to seeing the promise of AI-assisted coding, while emphasizing the need for strong human review, especially for security. The episode also dives into the architecture of Cloudflare Workers and its first months, Durable Objects, and the vision of the Internet as one programmable computer: “the network is the computer”.

Looking ahead, Kenton predicts a new era of developers powered by AI assistants — building more custom apps than ever — and explains why Cloudflare Workers is built to support that future.

Mentioned blog posts:

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined in Cloudflare’s Lisbon office by Scott Tomtania, a seasoned recruiting leader at Cloudflare, to discuss the company's incredible growth, its unique hiring philosophy, and how AI is shaping the future of recruitment.

Scott shares insights on how Cloudflare maintains its unique culture amidst rapid expansion, the rigorous selection process (including C-level interviews for every candidate!), and the evolving role of AI in talent acquisition. Discover what it takes to join one of the Internet's most impactful companies.

We also have Jocelyn Woolbright talk about how our Project Galileo is helping NGOs and vulnerable groups for 11 years now.

Mentioned blog posts: