Cloudflare’s “Workers Launchpad” Funding Program Grows to $2 Billion, Announces First Cohort of Startups

Rhea-AI Summary

Cloudflare has expanded its Workers Launchpad Funding Program to $2 billion, adding 14 new venture capital partners and onboarding 25 startups from 10 countries. Initially launched in September 2022 to fund applications built on Cloudflare Workers, the program has exceeded its initial $250 million goal, reflecting strong industry trust in its global network. The new cohort includes innovative firms like Apyfy and Grafbase, which focus on data privacy and backend development. This program aims to support the growing number of developers using Cloudflare.

Positive

• Funding program expanded to $2 billion, indicating strong market confidence.
• Addition of 14 new venture capital partners increases investment potential.
• First cohort of 25 startups from 10 countries showcases global interest.

Negative

• None.

Funding program grows to 40 venture capital firms; first cohort of entrepreneurs building on Cloudflare Workers includes 25 startups, spanning 10 countries

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the security, performance, and reliability company helping to build a better Internet, today announced the Workers Launchpad Funding Program has grown to $2 billion for potential investment in startups building on Cloudflare Workers, an increase of 14 partners and $750 million in less than two months. Cloudflare is also introducing the first cohort of startups participating in the program, featuring 25 companies from 10 countries.

“When we set out to debut the Workers Launchpad, we were aiming for $250 million and surpassed that goal by a mile when we hit $1.25 billion. To reach $2 billion is a big deal, and one that proves the industry trusts in the potential of our global network,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO, Cloudflare. “As we hit 1 million developers building and maintaining applications with Cloudflare, there’s no better time to continue investing in the developers using Cloudflare.”

The Cloudflare Workers Launchpad funding program initially launched in September 2022 to provide up to $1.25 billion of financing to startups building applications on Cloudflare Workers, a highly-scalable serverless computing platform that allows developers to build or augment apps without configuring or maintaining infrastructure. In the days and weeks following, Cloudflare received a surge in interest globally from venture capitalists interested in joining the program. Cloudflare has now welcomed 14 additional venture capital partners into the program, adding regional expertise in Australia and Latin America to the pool of partners.

New venture partners include:

• 8VC: “We’re extremely excited to be backing the next generation of founders building at the edge on top of Cloudflare Workers. At 8VC, we partner with founders to build transformational technologies that create long-term value for the economy and society as a whole. We believe that serverless infrastructure will enable a new generation of transformational technologies in the area of multi-modal, data and AI driven applications,” said Bhaskar Ghosh (BG), Partner and CTO at 8VC.
• AirTree: "AirTree partners with Australia and New Zealand's top founders, right from the start. Seeing enterprises like Cloudflare deliver value to startups developing on the next generation in edge computing is only a win for the global tech ecosystem, and enables founders to focus on what matters most: building category-defining companies,” said John Henderson, Partner at AirTree.
• Alumni Ventures: "We're looking to back the next wave of innovative entrepreneurs and businesses. We believe the Cloudflare Workers platform will be a critical component for founders as they build innovative apps and products. We're thrilled to be partnering with Cloudflare on this initiative,” said Wesley Yiu, Senior Principal at Alumni Ventures.
• B Capital: “Workers provides the technology and infrastructure to founders excited to build next generation products, and B Capital is proud to work alongside of these great innovators to provide insights and capital to grow in a bold way from the start,” said Karen Page, General Partner at B Capital.
• Benhamou Global Ventures: “The next generation of apps will be built in a distributed way and at the edge to meet the consumer demands of latency, performance, and scale. We are excited to partner with the Cloudflare Workers Fund and support the entrepreneurs building this next wave of enterprise startups,” said Yash Hemaraj, Partner at BGV.
• Chamaeleon: “At Chamaeleon, we look forward to collaborating with Cloudflare's Workers Launchpad, by bringing the firm, our unique quant & tech platform, and our #KIN members to the forefront of our value-add to this pioneering ecosystem,” said Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Chamaeleon.
• Conversion Capital: “The Cloudflare Workers platform provides the building blocks to usher in a new era of serverless infrastructure, which is drastically reshaping large parts of the global economy run on software. We are excited to partner with Cloudflare and help accelerate this transition,” said Christian Lawless, General Partner at Conversion Capital.
• Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley): “We have a culture of continued learning and long-term thinking, and are uniquely positioned to partner with like-minded companies over the course of their lifecycle. Given Workers’ incredible innovation platform, we are excited to support the next generation of businesses emerging from Cloudflare’s dynamic and growing ecosystem,” said Dennis Lynch, Head of Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley).
• GGV: “We’ve been amazed by how quickly the Workers ecosystem has blossomed and are already seeing some of the most innovative founders we know building serverless products on top of or closely tied into Cloudflare. As more startups look to build on Workers from day one, we’re very excited about supporting the ecosystem,” said Dan Cahana, Investor at GGV Capital.
• IGNIA: “IGNIA’s focus of partnering with world-class tech entrepreneurs in Latin America aims to ensure the best technology can scale in and out of the region. Cloudflare Workers’ ability to have code running in minutes around the world gives so much potential to the entrepreneurs we want to see succeed,” said Alvaro Rodríguez Arregui, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at IGNIA.
• Kleiner Perkins: "For five decades, Kleiner Perkins has partnered with founders at the earliest stages of company formation. Many of these companies were enabled by advances in computing, from the PC, to mobile, to cloud. The Cloudflare Workers Launchpad program stands to advance the next wave - serverless computing. We're excited to be a part of the global platform they are building to support builders in this rapidly growing ecosystem,” said Bucky Moore, Partner, Kleiner Perkins.
• Nauta Capital: “Thrilled to partner with Cloudflare on this Workers Launchpad Funding Program. Nauta Capital has been keenly following the technology disruptions in enterprise infrastructure software for decades, and developers are increasingly interested in spending time on the 'core problem', leaving infrastructure to be handled for them. Cloudflare provides a powerful platform for some of these new ideas to take shape,” said Pratima Aiyagari, Venture Partner at Nauta Capital.
• Primary VC: “At Primary, we love building with founders from the ground up. Cloudflare Workers has the performance and scale that founders need to build a category-defining company and we're eager to partner with the teams using this powerful platform,” said Brian Schechter, Partner at Primary VC.
• Unusual Ventures: “Founders want to focus on creating products that matter. To do that, they need partners and infrastructure that allow them to efficiently run secure, scalable applications. That's why we're excited to partner with Cloudflare on Workers Launchpad: to enable founders and teams with the tools they need to reach product-market fit and beyond," said Wei Lien Dang, General Partner at Unusual Ventures.

Introducing the Workers Launchpad’s Fall 2022 Cohort

Additionally, Cloudflare is announcing the Fall 2022 cohort of 25 entrepreneurs from around the world, chosen from hundreds of applicants from over 30 countries. Cohort finalists include Apyfy, working on data privacy, and Grafbase, accelerating backend software development. The cohort includes startups from Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, India, Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The cohort will have the opportunity to pitch VC partners for investment, receive technical advice and support, participate in a virtual boot camp featuring sessions led by Cloudflare leaders and VC partners, and showcase their businesses during a Demo Day.

• "Apyfy aims to provide a privacy firewall that solves data privacy challenges in the health care, financial service and ecommerce industries. We use Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects to enable privacy-preserving computation across a global network. Cloudflare also solves our customers' data sovereignty and data residency requirements while providing massive compute power, and minimal latency,” said John Childs-Eddy, Cofounder of Apyfy.
• "Grafbase is the easiest way to build and deploy GraphQL backends. We set out with Cloudflare thanks to their global network and serverless FaaS platform without cold starts, with the goal to simplify and speed up backend development for frontend and mobile developers," said Fredrik Björk, Founder and CEO of Grafbase.

“We’ve been blown away by the engagement and excitement the venture capital firms have shown when they saw the caliber of applicants,” said Mia Wang, M&A and Strategy Director at Cloudflare. “The selection process for the first cohort has been collaborative and we’re looking forward to connecting startups directly with VCs in the coming weeks.”

A Million Developers Building With Cloudflare

Earlier this week, Cloudflare shared that 1 million developers are building and maintaining enterprise-ready applications with Cloudflare. With Workers features like Pages, Durable Objects, R2 and D1, and application services like rate limiting, load balancing, bot management and more, Cloudflare provides the tools to make building and maintaining applications cheaper, faster, and easier for developers.

To learn more, please check out the resources below:

• Blog: Announcing the first Workers Launchpad cohort and growth of the program to $2BN
• To apply to the Winter 2023 cohort, visit the Workers Launchpad page
• Blog: Announcing the Workers Launchpad Funding Program
• Blog: The Cloudflare Startup Plan, v2.0
• Learn more about Cloudflare Workers
• Get started with Cloudflare Workers

Cloudflare is not providing any funding or making any funding decisions, and there is no guarantee that any particular company will receive funding through the program. All funding decisions will be made by the venture capital firms that participate in the program. Cloudflare is not a registered broker-dealer, investment adviser, or other similar intermediary.

About Cloudflare

Cloudflare, Inc. (www.cloudflare.com / @cloudflare) is on a mission to help build a better Internet. Cloudflare’s suite of products protect and accelerate any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare have all web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures 2018 list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company in 2019.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, which statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expect,” “explore,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “could,” “intend,” “target,” “project,” “contemplate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” or “continue,” or the negative of these words, or other similar terms or expressions that concern Cloudflare’s expectations, strategy, plans, or intentions. However, not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Forward-looking statements expressed or implied in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the potential benefits to Cloudflare customers from using Cloudflare Workers, Cloudflare’s application services products, and Cloudflare’s other products and technology, the capabilities and effectiveness of Cloudflare Workers, Cloudflare’s application services products, and Cloudflare’s other products and technology, the expected functionality and performance of Cloudflare Workers, Cloudflare’s application services products, and Cloudflare’s other products and technology, the numbers of developers building and maintaining applications with Cloudflare and any future growth in the number of such developers, the timing of when any new features of Cloudflare Workers, Cloudflare’s application services products, or any of Cloudflare’s other products and technology will be generally available to all current and potential Cloudflare customers, the potential availability of financing and other benefits for startups building applications using Cloudflare Workers and, if provided to any startup, the timing or amount of such financing or other benefits, Cloudflare’s technological development, future operations, growth, initiatives, or strategies, and comments made by Cloudflare’s CEO and others. Cloudflare’s actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including but not limited to, risks detailed in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including Cloudflare’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed on November 3, 2022, as well as other filings that we may make from time to time with the SEC.

The forward-looking statements made in this press release relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made in this press release to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions, or expectations disclosed in Cloudflare’s forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on Cloudflare’s forward-looking statements.

© 2022 Cloudflare, Inc. All rights reserved. Cloudflare, the Cloudflare logo, and other Cloudflare marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Cloudflare, Inc. in the U.S. and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names referenced herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221117005263/en/

Cloudflare, Inc.

Daniella Vallurupalli

Vice President, Head of Global Communications

press@cloudflare.com

Source: Cloudflare, Inc.

FAQ

What is Cloudflare's Workers Launchpad Funding Program?

It's a funding initiative by Cloudflare designed to support startups building on Cloudflare Workers, offering up to $2 billion in financing.

How many venture capital firms are involved in Cloudflare's funding program?

The program has grown to include 40 venture capital firms.

When was the Workers Launchpad Funding Program launched?

It was launched in September 2022.

What types of startups are included in the first cohort of Cloudflare's funding program?

The cohort includes 25 innovative startups focusing on various technologies, including data privacy and backend development.

What is the significance of the $2 billion funding for Cloudflare?

This funding increase signals strong confidence from the industry in Cloudflare's capabilities and its network potential.