Cloudflare CFO Thomas Seifert on Russia, Ukraine and cloud business
Cloudflare CFO Thomas Seifert on staying in Russia, supporting Ukraine, and what it means to carry more than ten per cent of global internet traffic.
In Russia, the software of a 35-billion-dollar Silicon Valley cloud company tops the download charts: Cloudflare. The company is a global expert in fast, reliable internet – and protects websites from cyberattacks.
In this episode of Handelsblatt Disrupt, CFO Thomas Seifert explains why Cloudflare is staying in Russia, how it is simultaneously helping Ukraine, and how its business model differs from Amazon, Google and others.
“We started working with Ukraine before the invasion and integrated a large share of the critical infrastructure into our network,” says Seifert. Once the war began, all government websites and independent media portals were added.
Cloudflare’s work in Ukraine has given Seifert a detailed window into how the war is unfolding. Not only has the number of cyberattacks risen sharply, he says – he can also track through network data how refugee flows are moving from east to west, and how the fighting is destroying infrastructure.
The Russian business, by contrast, amounts to “very small sums of money,” he says by way of justification. It is important to keep “access to the network open” for the Russian population, since demand for critical news services in Russia has “skyrocketed” since the invasion.
Seifert and I also discuss Cloudflare’s business model. The company handles more than ten per cent of global internet traffic; by the end of the year, Seifert expects revenue of one billion dollars – compared to 100 million dollars when he became CFO five years ago.
Cloudflare benefits from the transformation projects of software companies worldwide. As data migrates to the cloud, “the business models of corporations change fundamentally. Instead of buying hardware, they prefer to take services on a subscription basis,” he says.
On whether Cloudflare should censor content published on websites it serves, Seifert is clear: the company does not want to. “Is it in the interest of the world that CEOs decide what counts as free speech in Germany? We need a political process that tells our company what should be protected – and what should not.”
On competition with Google and Amazon, Seifert is relaxed. Cloudflare has no ambition to become a counterweight to them, he says. The goal is not “to build large data centres in Silicon Valley.” Instead, Cloudflare stores data on decentralised servers in cities and communities around the world.