Cloudflare shares jump after raising forecast on AI spending

Cloudflare just handed investors the kind of earnings report that makes a stock move in a hurry. The cloud infrastructure company reported second-quarter revenue of $696.1 million, cleared its own earnings bar by a comfortable margin, and then raised its full-year forecast to reflect what it sees as a lasting shift in how the internet gets used. Shares responded by jumping roughly 16 to 18 percent in after-hours and pre-market trading on August 6 and 7. What the numbers actually say The Q2 revenue figure of $696.1 million came in well above analyst consensus estimates of around $665.5 million. Adjusted earnings per share landed at $0.29, beating the $0.27 consensus. Cloudflare now expects fiscal 2026 revenue of $2.86 billion to $2.87 billion, compared with a prior range of $2.805 billion to $2.813 billion. The company also lifted its adjusted EPS outlook to $1.25 to $1.26, up from the previous range of $1.19 to $1.20. CEO Matthew Prince pointed to a specific data point as the underlying driver. Non-human traffic, meaning automated requests from bots, AI agents, and machine-to-machine systems, crossed 50 percent of total network traffic on Cloudflare’s platform for the first time. C...