Cloudflare (NET) Jumps 8% as Snowflake Earnings Validate AI Agent Traffic Boom

Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) shares surged 8% on May 29, 2026, after cloud software peer Snowflake reported strong first-quarter earnings that underscored the rapid growth of AI agent traffic on Cloudflare's network. Snowflake's results validated CEO Matthew Prince's May 7 claim that AI agents generate "hundreds of billions of agentic requests per month" through the company's execution-layer infrastructure. When AI applications built on Snowflake's data platform take actions—retrieving information, running code, or calling APIs—those requests route through Cloudflare's network. An Anthropic partnership announced May 19 makes this concrete: Claude-powered agents execute via Cloudflare Workers, and Snowflake uses Anthropic models in its Cortex Intelligence product. Analysts view the move as confirmation that the AI boom serves as a significant tailwind for Cloudflare's "picks and shovels" approach, which doesn't require competing on AI models. Cloudflare stock has gained 15.6% year to date but remains 11.7% below its 52-week high of $256.79 set in May 2026.