Analysts raise targets as AI fuels Cloudflare’s growth

Cloudflare’s stock jumped 12% this week after the company beat expectations and gave a strong forecast. Traders were already watching for signs that AI demand would boost its business. The earnings call confirmed it. Every major number came in above estimates. That’s what set this whole thing off.

Revenue hit $615 million, up 34% from last year. Profit came in at 28 cents per share, higher than the 27 cents analysts had guessed. That part’s straightforward. But the reason people are piling into Cloudflare goes deeper than just those numbers.

Analysts raise targets as AI fuels Cloudflare’s growth

CEO Matthew Prince told analysts on Tuesday that a big change is happening. He said more people are building AI tools that run tasks for users. These systems rely on fast and secure networks, which is exactly what Cloudflare offers. Matt said:-

“If AI agents are the new users of the internet, Cloudflare is the platform they run on and the network they pass through. This creates a virtuous flywheel.”

The company raised its guidance too. For the first quarter, Cloudflare expects revenue between $620 million and $621 million, higher than the expected $614 million.

For the full year, the company projects between $2.79 billion and $2.80 billion, above the previous estimate of $2.74 billion.

Another reason for the spike is what happened with Moltbot. That’s an open-source AI assistant built on Anthropic’s Claude model. When it blew up last month, Cloudflare’s platform handled it.

That gave it real proof of how well it supports AI agents. The company quickly rolled out Moltworker, its own product designed to run Moltbot safely.

The interest in edge computing is also growing fast. AI needs to be run close to the user. It needs to scale up and down without delays. Cloudflare already built the tools for that. RBC Capital Markets said:-

“The continued proliferation of AI agents benefits Cloudflare and its Workers platform as AI agents require low-latency, secure inferencing that often scales up and scales down and is close to the user or ‘edge’ of the network.”

Matthew also said they ended 2025 with 4.5 million active human developers. That’s a massive group using Cloudflare to build and deploy tools.

Wall Street took notice.TD Cowen kept its Buy rating and raised its target to $265, saying Cloudflare is growing thanks to AI. The stock was at $199.04 when they made that call. But not everyone sees the same upside.

InvestingPro data shows the stock is already trading above Fair Value. Price targets range from $120 to $300.

KeyBanc held its Overweight rating with a $300 target, saying Cloudflare beat Q4 expectations by $24 million. Citizens stayed at Market Outperform and set their target at $270, citing stronger sales and Matthew’s leadership.

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