India, May 8 -- Cloudflare is laying off more than 1,100 employees to prepare for the "agentic AI era". The cybersecurity company told staff about the workforce reduction on Thursday, after posting first-quarter revenue of $639.8 million.

Cloudflare co-founders Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn said in an internal memo, seen by Business Insider, that the company's use of AI had increased "more than 600%" in the last three months alone. They framed the layoffs as an exercise to prepare for the agentic AI era, and not a cost-cutting measure.

"The way we work at Cloudflare has fundamentally changed," the company executives said in their memo. "We don't just build and sell AI tools and platforms. We are our own most demanding customer".

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