Inside the collapse of the internet economy (and what comes next)

Azeem Azhar sat down with Matthew Prince, co-founder & CEO of Cloudflare. Matthew is a rare operator with the vantage point to answer a simple question: if agents do the reading, who gets paid?
This conversation is a practical map of how AI “answer engines” upend the web’s traffic-funded model – and what could replace it.
Chapters:
(00:46) The currency of the web is dying
(06:08) Google's inflection point
(10:08) Why a broken business model might save the internet
(14:44) The incentivization of ragebait
(20:38) Content scarcity as a solution
(24:35) What could a new content business model look like?
(28:51) The challenge of pricing information
(29:31) How Cloudflare thinks about the creator economy
(32:06) Should smaller companies pay less?
(34:24) Can markets solve this without Congress?
(39:11) How does the agentic web affect content?
(43:40) A rare chance to redesign the internet
Produced by EPIIPLUS1 Ltd and supermix.io
Production and research: Chantal Smith, Hannah Petrovic, Nathan Warren and Marija Gavrilov.
About Exponential View:
Welcome to Exponential View, where Azeem Azhar examines how exponential technologies such as AI are reshaping the future. Each week, Azeem shares his analysis or speaks with an expert guest to shed light on frontier shifts across technology, business and society.
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Production by EPIIPLUS1.
Production and research: Baba Films, Marija Gavrilov.
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