Whenever a major cloud provider has an outage, we are reminded how dependent we are on the internet, and that a very small number of companies control the majority of it.

The last AWS outage lasted significantly longer than most people, including experts, had expected.

“I don’t think this was just a ‘stuff happens’ outage. I would have expected a full remediation much faster,” Jake Williams, vice president of research and development at Hunter Strategy, told Wired.

In addition to causing numerous services, including Snapchat and Signal, to go down, the AWS outage also affected Internet of Things devices, such as smart mattresses and automated cat litter boxes, The Register reported.

The AWS outage is still fresh in everyone’s memory, yet we have witnessed another major outage, this time taking down websites that rely on Cloudflare.

Cloudflare’s outage shaved 2.83% from the stock’s value.

Piotr Swat/Shutterstock

Cloudflare outage shaves 2.83% off stock’s value

Web-infrastructure company Cloudflare(NET) has fully restored its services after an outage on November 18. The outage caused major internet platforms, including X and ChatGPT, to become inaccessible, reported Reuters.

According to the company, the outage was caused by an automatically generated configuration file, intended to manage potential security threats. The file grew too large and crashed the software system handling traffic for several Cloudflare services.

Cloudflare stock closed the Nov. 18 trading session 2.83% lower at $196.53. The outage exacerbated the ongoing sell-off of the stock, and the closing price is 22.4% lower than the stock’s peak closing price of $253.30 on October 31.

The October 31 peak followed a very strong earnings release.

Here are the Cloudflare Q3 earnings highlights:

  • Total revenue of $562.0 million, representing an increase of 31% year over year.
  • Gross profit was $415.7 million, or 74.0% gross margin, compared to $334.1 million, or 77.7%, in Q3 2024.
  • Net loss was $1.3 million, compared to $15.3 million in Q3 2024.
  • Net loss per basic and diluted share was $0.00, compared to $0.04 in Q3 2024.

The sell-off is the result not of poor business performance, but of the stock’s inclusion in a group that’s taking a hit due to AI skepticism. These doubts have triggered a wider tech stock sell-off, fueling the impression that most of the companies in the group have very high valuations.

Recent Cloudflare activity

Cloudflare will acquire Replicate, an AI platform that helps developers deploy and run AI models. This acquisition will enable developers building on Cloudflare to access any AI model globally with just one line of code.

“We’re still in the early innings of developers building AI applications, and too much of the complexity falls on the developer today. Replicate was founded on the mission to solve that — to build the fundamental tools that make AI development truly accessible and easy,” said Replicate CEO Ben Firshman.

Cloudflare announced that its connectivity cloud platform will be available natively on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). This will enable joint customers to benefit from Cloudflare’s security and performance directly within OCI, across hybrid, multicloud, and OCI-hosted applications.

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Cloudflare plans to introduce NET Dollar, a new U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin that will enable instant, secure transactions for the agentic web. The company believes that NET Dollar will help power a new business model for the Internet that rewards originality, sustains creativity, and enables innovation in an AI-driven world.

“For decades, the business model of the Internet ran on ad platforms and bank transfers. The Internet’s next business model will be powered by pay-per-use, fractional payments, and microtransactions — tools that shift incentives toward original, creative content that actually adds value,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “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.”

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