AWS and Cloudflare update cloud services for AI agent traffic

In short: Big cloud companies are changing how their systems work because AI agents create very different internet traffic than people do.

What's going on

Cloud systems were built for humans who browse the web in a fairly steady way, like searching, clicking, and streaming. AI agents behave more like a swarm. They can suddenly fire off many requests in seconds, like checking lots of files, searching databases, and calling online services (APIs, which are like order windows that let one app ask another app for data).

Amazon Web Services (AWS) says it is redesigning a key part of its cloud to fit these patterns. AWS just launched the next generation of OpenSearch Serverless, a managed search and “vector database” (a way to store and look up information, including for AI features). AWS says it can scale up quickly when agents get busy and then scale back down to zero when nothing is happening, so customers pay nothing while it is idle.

Other companies are making similar moves. Cloudflare reported that bots made up 31% of overall HTTP traffic in the last six months, and AI crawlers and assistants were about a quarter of bot requests. A Cloudflare product manager told TechCrunch that non-human traffic could exceed human traffic in the first half of 2027.

What to watch

As more businesses let AI agents do work like research, booking travel, and interacting with apps, “machine to machine” traffic will likely grow. The key question is whether these changes make AI services cheaper and more reliable, or whether they create new costs and new rules for how websites and online services handle automated visitors.

Source: TechCrunch AI