AI, Creators & Agentic Commerce - A Conversation with Cloudflare CSO Stephanie Cohen

#ThisWeekinNET — Episode 112

In this episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé sits down with Stephanie Cohen, Cloudflare’s Chief Strategy Officer, for a candid conversation about AI, content creators, financial services, partnerships, and the future of the Internet.

Stephanie shares how Cloudflare is helping keep the Internet open and resilient — from giving creators transparency and control over AI scraping, to enabling new models of agentic commerce through partnerships with Visa and Mastercard, to empowering organizations of all sizes through Cloudflare’s global network.

The conversation also explores the rise of Agentic Commerce, where AI agents can complete secure payments on behalf of users. Stephanie explains how this shift is emerging, why trust and standards matter, and how Cloudflare is working with key financial institutions to make it safe.

They also discuss what innovation looks like inside large companies, how AI is reshaping industries, and why Cloudflare sees itself as an enabler for both creators and the long tail of innovators.
Recorded in Lisbon.

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⏱️ Timestamps:

00:46 — Cloudflare’s first Chief Strategy Officer, and “Agentic Commerce” partnerships

02:08 — From Goldman Sachs to Cloudflare: Stephanie’s career path

02:40 — Defining the CSO role and key strategic initiatives

03:58 — Corporate culture: maintaining innovation at scale

05:53 — AI and content: the “scraping” crisis and Cloudflare’s mission

10:36 — AI Crawl Control, and creating content scarcity

12:33 — “Human-optimized” vs. “Machine-optimized” Internet

14:53 — The financial sector: AI, resiliency, and threat intelligence

19:28 — WebBotAuth and verifying AI agents for commerce

25:51 — How legacy companies can innovate safely (the incubation model)

29:20 — Strategy framework: “Playing to Win” vs. “Playing to Play”

34:46 — Leadership advice: making the people around you better