CompanyGraph
Cloudflare Inc.
NET · NYSE Arca · United States
Terminates internet TCP connections at the network edge by advertising identical anycast IP addresses from 330+ globally distributed data centers, placing filtering and acceleration within 50 milliseconds of users.
Cloudflare's anycast architecture routes user traffic to whichever of its 330+ edge locations is geographically closest, because fiber-speed physics means DDoS filtering and cache acceleration degrade exponentially beyond 50 milliseconds of distance — so every new metropolitan deployment must inherit the full, synchronized security policy state of the entire network, making each expansion a global replication event rather than an isolated build. That mandatory synchronization creates a floor of operational complexity that scales with the number of edge nodes, and the physical prerequisites for each new node — real estate, power contracts, and carrier interconnection — must be negotiated sequentially in each market, so capital alone cannot compress the deployment timeline. The same BGP routing fabric that makes anycast work without external load balancers is also the surface through which a poisoned route advertisement can redirect traffic away from Cloudflare's controls before any filtering occurs, meaning the mechanism that delivers the proximity guarantee is inseparable from the mechanism that can defeat it. Customers deepen this interdependency over time through DNS delegation, SSL certificate pinning to Cloudflare's IP ranges, and Workers functions that cannot migrate to traditional cloud infrastructure without architectural rewrites — so the switching friction that stabilizes Cloudflare's traffic base is a direct consequence of how deeply the edge platform embeds itself into each customer's network path.
How does this company make money?
The company charges through tiered subscription plans based on bandwidth consumption and feature access, with additional charges for Workers compute requests, Stream video delivery bandwidth, and domain registration services through the registrar business.
What makes this company hard to replace?
DNS nameserver changes require TTL expiration periods and propagation delays across global DNS infrastructure before a switch takes effect. Workers serverless functions deployed on the edge platform cannot be migrated to traditional cloud providers without architectural rewrites. SSL certificate pinning in mobile applications locks traffic to specific edge IP address ranges.
What limits this company?
Signal propagation through fiber optic cable cannot be reduced below the speed of light, so sub-50ms response times are achievable only by placing physical hardware inside expensive metropolitan real estate markets. Capital cannot substitute for geographic presence: carrier interconnection, local power infrastructure, and real estate negotiations must be completed sequentially in each new market, creating a physical deployment ceiling that cannot be parallelized away.
What does this company depend on?
The mechanism depends on fiber optic network capacity leased from telecommunications carriers, BGP routing agreements with internet service providers for traffic exchange, x86 server hardware from Intel and AMD deployed across edge locations, SSL/TLS certificate issuance from Let's Encrypt and other certificate authorities, and the ICANN domain registration system for authoritative DNS services.
Who depends on this company?
E-commerce platforms like Shopify would experience increased page load times and cart abandonment during traffic spikes without edge caching. Cryptocurrency exchanges would face trading disruptions from DDoS attacks without traffic filtering. Content creators on platforms like Discord would suffer degraded video streaming quality without bandwidth optimization at network edges.
How does this company scale?
Security rule enforcement and content caching replicate across new edge locations through automated configuration synchronization, reducing per-request costs as traffic volume grows. Physical data center deployment in new metropolitan markets requires local real estate acquisition, power infrastructure, and carrier interconnection negotiations that cannot be automated or accelerated through capital alone.
What external forces can significantly affect this company?
Data residency regulations in jurisdictions including the European Union and China require local data processing capabilities, forcing expensive infrastructure duplication. Submarine cable cuts or BGP hijacking incidents by nation-states can isolate entire geographic regions from the global network. Rising electricity costs in major metropolitan markets increase the operational expense of maintaining edge presence.
Where is this company structurally vulnerable?
BGP peering is also the attack surface: upstream ISPs can originate route hijacks or misconfigurations that redirect anycast traffic away from legitimate edge locations before it reaches the company's security controls, because the anycast mechanism that eliminates the need for external load balancing also means a single poisoned BGP advertisement propagates through the same global routing fabric that delivers the differentiator.