Cloudflare announces $1.25 billion Workers Launchpad Funding Program

Cloudflare has unveiled its new Workers Launchpad Funding Program, a new initiative that will provide up to $1.25 billion of financing to business startups.

The partnership sees Cloudflare partner with 26 leading venture capital firms to support developers using the Cloudflare Workers platform to build their applications.

In an announcement, the firm said the program is open to any private company around the world that is building on the platform and, if selected by the participating venture capital firms, they may receive cash investment, as well as mentorship and support from Cloudflare.

Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, said the venture capitalists will be looking at applicants’ potential to significantly scale their business.

“Startups that build on Cloudflare Workers are building on a platform made to automatically support serious scale,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare.

“While we can provide the technology, we’re thrilled to partner with some of the leading venture capital firms on the Workers Launchpad Funding Program, who will potentially invest more than a billion dollars in funding towards great startups built on Cloudflare Workers as they scale.”

The Cloudflare Workers platform helps developers build and deploy applications without configuring or maintaining costly infrastructure. With its network spanning more than 275 cities across 100 countries, developers can deploy code to their users, providing the speed, performance, and scale of Cloudflare to customers.

Since 2017, more than 500,000 developers have built on Cloudflare’s developer platform, launching three million applications.

Now, startups applying for the company’s new initiative will be eligible for potential investment from investors, the Cloudflare Startup Enterprise Plan, which includes Cloudflare Workers, Cloudflare for Teams, Cloudflare Stream, as well as additional core security and performance offerings, and exclusive events.

Cloudflare has already benefited from the fruits of its own technology. Back in 2021, it acquired internet security startup Zaraz, which built its offering using the Cloudflare Workers platform.

CEO and co-founder Yair Dovrat said the company chose to rely on Workers as it could help both launch and scale the business faster.

“We were blown away by the developer experience, performance, and security that Workers offered and ultimately joined the Cloudflare team to help push the standard for a better Internet more holistically,” he said.