Cloudflare and JD Cloud Announce Partnership to Accelerate AI Inference Deployment and Scaling for Global Developers

Key Terms

ai inference technical

AI inference is the step where a trained artificial intelligence model uses its learned patterns to analyze new data and produce an output — for example, predicting a stock trend, flagging a medical image, or generating text, much like using a recipe to cook a meal. It matters to investors because inference determines real-world performance, speed, and cost of AI features, affects user experience and scalability, and influences operating expenses, regulatory compliance, and competitive advantage.

web application firewall (waf) technical

A web application firewall (WAF) is a security tool placed between a website or online service and incoming internet traffic that inspects requests and blocks malicious activity such as hacking attempts, bots, or attempts to steal data. For investors, a WAF matters because it helps protect customer information, maintain uptime and trust, and reduce the risk of costly breaches, regulatory penalties and reputation damage—much like a security guard protecting a storefront.

distributed denial-of-service (ddos) technical

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to overwhelm a website, online service, or network by flooding it with more traffic or requests than it can handle, often using many compromised devices acting together. For investors, a DDoS is important because it can cause service outages like a traffic jam, leading to lost sales, extra costs for recovery and protection, damaged reputation, and potential regulatory or contractual consequences that can hurt a company’s value.

content delivery network (cdn) technical

A content delivery network (CDN) is a distributed system of servers that stores and delivers website files, video, and other online content from locations closer to users so pages load faster and stay available during traffic spikes. For investors, a CDN matters because faster, more reliable content delivery improves user experience, supports higher traffic and sales, and reduces the risk of outages—factors that can influence revenue, customer retention, and operating costs.

Partnership projected to reduce latency for AI inference workloads by up to 80 percent, establishing a truly global, high-performance AI Cloud for the developer community

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the leading connectivity cloud company, and JD Cloud, an intelligent technology service provider and affiliate of JD.com, today announced plans for a significant expansion of their partnership, aimed at creating a global platform that empowers developers to deploy, manage, and scale AI inference workloads seamlessly.

The growth of AI-driven applications over the past three years has resulted in unprecedented demand for geographically distributed inference capabilities. This broader partnership will enable Cloudflare and JD Cloud to deliver a cohesive networking experience, projected to reduce latency for AI inference workloads by up to 80 percent, establishing a truly global, high-performance AI Cloud that seamlessly connects global developers to the China market and Chinese developers to the rest of the world.

"The future of AI depends on a truly global network that can keep up. Our partnership with JD Cloud makes that possible—giving developers a simple, reliable way to build and run AI applications seamlessly across the world,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. "By minimizing the technical and logistical hurdles for AI developers, we are providing the essential tools for businesses to succeed in a competitive international landscape."

This latest expansion builds upon the successful foundation that the companies have created together over the past five years. The integration of Cloudflare’s intelligent global platform with JD Cloud’s robust infrastructure already delivers a unified experience, allowing customers to activate their presence in China with just a few clicks—without changing a single line of code. Once enabled, traffic from users in China is automatically routed to local data centers, operated by JD Cloud, while all other traffic is served from the nearest Cloudflare location worldwide. This seamless setup ensures a secure, fast, and reliable experience reducing latency and strengthening performance with Cloudflare’s comprehensive suite of security services, including its cloud-based Web Application Firewall (WAF), advanced Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) mitigation, and global Content Delivery Network (CDN).

JD Cloud said that Cloudflare's mission complements JD Cloud's commitment to delivering premier services to its partners and customers. By leveraging JD.com’s extensive experience across a range of business scenarios and the advanced technological and logistical capabilities, this partnership ensures JD Cloud can continue to deliver market leading services for users and businesses.

About Cloudflare

Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET) is the leading connectivity cloud company on a mission to help build a better Internet. It empowers organizations to make their employees, applications and networks faster and more secure everywhere, while reducing complexity and cost. Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud delivers the most full-featured, unified platform of cloud-native products and developer tools, so any organization can gain the control they need to work, develop, and accelerate their business.

Powered by one of the world’s largest and most interconnected networks, Cloudflare blocks billions of threats online for its customers every day. It is trusted by millions of organizations – from the largest brands to entrepreneurs and small businesses to nonprofits, humanitarian groups, and governments across the globe.

Learn more about Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud at cloudflare.com/connectivity-cloud. Learn more about the latest Internet trends and insights at radar.cloudflare.com.

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Cloudflare Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, which statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expect,” “explore,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “could,” “intend,” “target,” “project,” “contemplate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” or “continue,” or the negative of these words, or other similar terms or expressions that concern Cloudflare’s expectations, strategy, plans, or intentions. However, not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Forward-looking statements expressed or implied in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the capabilities and effectiveness of Cloudflare’s products and technology, the benefits to Cloudflare’s customers from using Cloudflare’s products and technology, Cloudflare’s partnership with JD Cloud and the potential resulting benefits to Cloudflare customers, the potential benefits to customers of integrating Cloudflare and JD Cloud products, the potential opportunity for Cloudflare to attract additional customers and to expand sales to existing customers through Cloudflare’s partnership and integrations with JD Cloud, Cloudflare’s technological development, future operations, growth, initiatives, or strategies, and comments made by Cloudflare’s CEO and others. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including but not limited to, risks detailed in Cloudflare’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including Cloudflare’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed on October 30, 2025, as well as other filings that Cloudflare may make from time to time with the SEC.

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View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251217333655/en/

Cloudflare, Inc.

Daniella Vallurupalli

Vice President, Head of Global Communications

press@cloudflare.com

Source: Cloudflare, Inc.