No Free Crawls: Akamai, TollBit, and Skyfire Turn Traffic into Revenue

Rhea-AI Summary

Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM) has announced strategic partnerships with TollBit and Skyfire to help publishers monetize AI bot traffic. Handling over 150 billion daily bot requests, Akamai aims to transform unauthorized scraping into revenue-generating opportunities.

The TollBit partnership implements a website "tollbooth" system that authenticates and monetizes AI traffic, currently monitoring 1.5B quarterly bot scrapes across 3,000 publishers. The Skyfire collaboration introduces "Know Your Agent" (KYA) capabilities, providing verified identity and tokenization services for AI bots, enabling transparent access control and monetization options.

Positive

• Strategic partnerships enable new revenue streams from AI bot traffic
• Access to TollBit's network of 3,000 publishers and 1.5B quarterly bot scrapes
• Enhanced control and transparency over AI traffic through Skyfire's KYA framework
• Real-time edge detection and enforcement capabilities

Negative

• High volume of bot requests (150 billion daily) indicates significant content scraping pressure
• Implementation of new systems may require technical integration efforts

Insights

Tech Strategy Analyst

Akamai's new AI monetization partnerships create potential new revenue streams while solving content scraping challenges.

Akamai's strategic alliances with TollBit and Skyfire represent a significant advancement in the emerging market for AI traffic monetization. With over 150 billion bot requests processed daily across Akamai's network, the company is leveraging its scale to transform a growing problem – unauthorized AI scraping – into a potential revenue stream for its customers.

The partnerships address a critical pain point in the digital ecosystem. As AI systems increasingly crawl websites to train large language models, content owners have struggled with protecting their assets while potentially benefiting from this usage. Akamai's solution offers multiple monetization pathways rather than just blocking access.

TollBit's integration is particularly noteworthy as it already monitors 1.5 billion quarterly bot scrapes across 3,000 publishers worldwide. The partnership will redirect more AI bots to TollBit's paywall system, expanding beyond the 450 million quarterly bots currently captured. This creates a structured marketplace where AI companies pay for content access, effectively turning unauthorized scraping into legitimate transactions.

Skyfire brings complementary technology through its tokenization and "Know Your Agent" framework, providing identity verification for AI systems without sacrificing performance. This adds an accountability layer that allows content owners to implement conditional access policies.

Most importantly, these partnerships position Akamai as an infrastructure provider for the emerging AI agent economy. As AI systems become more autonomous and content-hungry, Akamai is establishing itself as the transaction layer between content creators and AI systems – potentially creating a new high-margin revenue stream beyond its traditional CDN and security services.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 17, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the cybersecurity and cloud computing company that powers and protects business online, today announced technical alliances with TollBit and Skyfire to give publishers and content owners multiple options to monetize AI bot traffic.

Handling more than 150 billion bot requests across its network every day, Akamai leverages its unmatched scale to help customers block the most aggressive forms of content scraping. As the number of AI-driven scraping agents increases, Akamai is helping organizations to protect their content, enforce fair usage, and unlock new revenue opportunities with its bot and abuse protection solutions.

"We're excited to offer our customers greater flexibility in managing and monetizing AI traffic—without locking them into a single platform," said Patrick Sullivan, CTO of Security Strategy at Akamai. "By partnering with TollBit and Skyfire, we empower our customers to take control—whether they choose to block scrapers, allow trusted agents, or charge for premium access—all in real time and at the edge."

Partnership with TollBit

TollBit enables a fair exchange of value between AI companies and websites by transforming scraping into sanctioned, revenue-generating access. Over 3,000 publishers and websites use the TollBit platform globally to monitor over 1.5B quarterly bot scrapes, set access terms, and receive direct compensation when AI bots and agents access their site.

Purpose-built for publishers and website owners, TollBit installs a website "tollbooth" that authenticates AI traffic, provides governance, and monetizes data access — while giving AI agents a scalable way to pay for what they use. Site owners stay in control with full visibility and the ability to define their own pricing and policies for AI visitors.

Through this partnership, Akamai's powerful detection and enforcement at the edge will allow publishers to identify and redirect more AI bots to the TollBit paywall, adding to the roughly 450M quarterly bots redirected now. TollBit is the trusted transaction layer for the agent economy — where autonomous visitors and AI companies access content responsibly, sites are compensated transparently, and the online economy remains sustainable.

"Site owners deserve fair compensation for how their content is used in the AI ecosystem. By pairing TollBit's analytics and monetization tools with Akamai's scale and detection capabilities, we're enabling a shift from unauthorized scraping to sustainable monetization" said Toshit Panigrahi, Co-Founder and CEO, TollBit.

Partnership with Skyfire

Skyfire offers verified identity, tokenization, and "Know Your Agent" (KYA) capabilities to the AI bot ecosystem. When an AI agent requests access to Akamai-protected content, the agent delivers verified identity information about the principal user behind the agent as well as the AI platform — allowing low-latency, secure access at the edge. These tokens don't require a redirection or proxy service between the agent and the website. The token-based identity system gives website owners full transparency without disintermediation into which agents access their content, under what identity, and for what purpose.

KYA identity tokens are used to access content, and are also used to identify known traffic to ecommerce properties, financial websites, and a host of other web properties to avoid false positive bot blocking.

After verification, website owners can optionally require payment for access. Skyfire allows instant payment for access with its integrated payment token, delivering trusted access with payment assurance. By integrating Akamai's detection and enforcement capabilities with Skyfire's identity and transaction model, publishers and other web properties gain the tools to both understand and monetize AI traffic in a secure, controlled manner.

"Skyfire brings accountability and trust to the fast-moving world of AI scraping. By combining our KYA framework with Akamai's advanced bot detection and massive scale, we're giving publishers the power to define how their content is accessed and monetized," said Craig DeWitt, Founder of Skyfire.

About Akamai
Akamai is the cybersecurity and cloud computing company that powers and protects business online. Our market-leading security solutions, superior threat intelligence, and global operations team provide defense in depth to safeguard enterprise data and applications everywhere. Akamai's full-stack cloud computing solutions deliver performance and affordability on the world's most distributed platform. Global enterprises trust Akamai to provide the industry-leading reliability, scale, and expertise they need to grow their business with confidence. Learn more at akamai.com and akamai.com/blog, or follow Akamai Technologies on X and LinkedIn.

About TollBit
TollBit offers AI agents and bots a scalable and compliant way to pay websites for their content. Our platform provides an alternative to web scraping and enables websites to monitor, manage, and monetize their AI bot traffic with advanced controls and analytics. To learn more, please visit tollbit.com

About Skyfire
Skyfire is the complete agentic commerce platform for AI agents and merchants. It gives AI and agents everything they need to transact autonomously, including verified identity for web access and account creation, tokenized credit cards, real-time micropayments, and instant programmatic checkout. With Skyfire's open Know Your Agent (KYA) protocol and fast, flexible payment rails, platforms can allow their users to scalably sign up, authenticate, and transact across APIs, websites, and marketplaces without leaving their LLM interface. The company is backed by Evolution and DCVC, a16z CSX, Coinbase Ventures, Neuberger Berman, Brevan Howard Digital, and other leading investors. Learn more at Skyfire.xyz.

CONTACT: Akamai PR, akamaiPR@akamai.com

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SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.

FAQ

What partnerships did Akamai (NASDAQ: AKAM) announce for AI traffic monetization?

Akamai announced partnerships with TollBit and Skyfire to help publishers monetize AI bot traffic through authentication, governance, and payment systems.

How many bot requests does Akamai handle daily in 2025?

Akamai handles more than 150 billion bot requests across its network every day.

What is TollBit's current reach in bot monitoring?

TollBit monitors over 1.5B quarterly bot scrapes across 3,000 publishers globally.

What is Skyfire's 'Know Your Agent' (KYA) system?

Skyfire's KYA system provides verified identity and tokenization for AI bots, allowing websites to identify users and AI platforms accessing their content while enabling payment options.

How will these partnerships benefit Akamai customers?

Customers can now block scrapers, allow trusted agents, or charge for premium access in real-time at the edge, while maintaining control over their content monetization strategy.