The intelligence layer every research tool is missing
Two things this week. A Gravity Report on Cloudflare, and a chart I drew to explain why reports like it can exist in the first place.
Both sit on the same idea. Most of what executives call “market intelligence” is performed for an audience. The interesting layer is the one that isn’t.
1. Gravity Report: Cloudflare
Cloudflare spent its first decade owning a clean three-word story: security, speed, reliability, rooted in the 2019 S-1 and repeated across every investor touchpoint since. That story carried the company from a 2019 IPO to roughly $4.7B in 2024 revenue, 55.3% GAAP gross margin, 27% YoY growth, and 1,275 customers spending more than $100K, with six reported $1M+ customers.
The gravity question is whether the original positioning still holds as the company reframes 2026 as “The Year of the Intelligent Internet” under Matthew Prince, with Michelle Zatlyn and Dane Knecht extending the story into AI infrastructure.
What the report found, in plain terms:
The original three-word spine still carries weight with customers, but the new AI narrative is being layered on top rather than earned through structural proof.
Outages, security incidents, and customer-visible reliability events create friction between the claim “the network is the internet” and the lived experience of developers and enterprise buyers.
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