Cloudflare Bets on NET Dollar Stablecoin to Revolutionize Global AI Transactions
Cloudflare just placed its biggest bet yet—staking its future on a dollar-pegged stablecoin to power the next generation of AI infrastructure.
The NET Dollar Gambit
Forget traditional payment rails. Cloudflare's throwing its weight behind a digital dollar that cuts settlement times from days to milliseconds. No more waiting for cross-border transfers to clear while AI models sit idle.
Global AI Meets Stable Currency
Machine learning workloads demand instant, frictionless payments across continents. The NET Dollar stablecoin bypasses banking bottlenecks that have plagued international AI development teams for years.
Why This Changes Everything
When AI transactions can flow as fast as data packets, we're looking at a fundamental shift in how intelligent systems operate globally. No more currency conversion headaches or banking holidays stopping critical model training.
Wall Street bankers might dismiss this as 'play money'—until they realize AI doesn't care about traditional banking hours or 3-day settlement periods.
A stablecoin built for the AI agent economy
Cloudflare believes its global network, which already accelerates and secures a significant portion of internet traffic, is the ideal foundation for a payment system that must operate across countless currencies, geographies, and time zones without friction.
“By using our global network, we are going to help modernize the financial rails needed to MOVE money at the speed of the Internet, helping to create a more open and valuable Internet for everyone,” Cloudflare CEO and co-founder, Matthew Prince, said.
According to the company, NET Dollar will enable instant, automated settlements for everything from paying an API for real-time flight bookings to compensating a supplier as quickly and reliably as the data is transmitted.
Prioritizing the AI-driven internet is a direct response to what Prince calls the limitations of the old web’s business model. He argues that decades of reliance on ad platforms and slow bank transfers have stifled innovation for creators and developers.
The company sees the rise of autonomous agents as the catalyst for a fundamental shift toward a pay-per-use internet. In this model, value is exchanged in tiny, incremental payments for specific services, a model legacy financial rails are structurally incapable of supporting due to speed and cost constraints.
Eyeing the bigger picture
Cloudflare is not operating in a vacuum. Its strategy acknowledges that interoperability is paramount. The company has announced it is contributing to open standards such as the Agent Payments Protocol and x402.
This places it alongside other major infrastructure players, notably Google, which is pioneering its own Agentic Payments Protocol (AP2). The parallel development of these protocols underscores a broader industry consensus: the agentic web requires a universal payment layer.
Google’s recent demo with Coinbase and Lowe’s, where an AI agent managed a complex home improvement purchase from consultation to stablecoin payment, serves as a proof-of-concept for this very future.
