Cloudflare partners with Databricks to bring AI inference to the edge through MLflow and the Databricks Marketplace

Cloudflare joins MLflow as an active contributor to bridge the gap between model training and deploying inference on the edge

Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the leading connectivity cloud company, today announced a continued collaboration with Databricks, the Data and AI company, to bring MLflow capabilities to developers building on Cloudflare’s serverless developer platform. Cloudflare is joining the open source MLflow project as an active contributor to bridge the gap between training models and easily deploying them to Cloudflare's global network, where AI models can run close to end-users for a low-latency experience.

As more businesses look to leverage AI to augment their products or processes, today there are many steps required to make it work end to end—from data collection, to storing data, using it for training models, and then deploying those models for inference.

Databricks and Cloudflare already collaborate to simplify the AI lifecycle by making sharing data simpler and more affordable through Delta Sharing with R2 storage. Cloudflare’s R2 is a zero egress, distributed object storage offering, allowing data teams to share live data sets and AI models with Databricks, easily and efficiently, eliminating the need for complex data transfers or duplications of data sets, and with zero egress fees.

In this new phase of partnership and collaboration on MLflow, Cloudflare and Databricks are closing the loop on how AI models are quickly and easily deployed to the edge. MLflow is an open-source platform for managing the machine learning (ML) lifecycle, created by Databricks. It has become a leading platform for end-to-end MLOps, enabling teams of all sizes to track, share, package, and deploy any model for batch or real-time inference. With this new partnership, developers will be able to train models utilizing Databricks’ data-centric AI platform, then deploy those models, to Cloudflare’s developer platform and global network, where hyper-local inference is deployed on the edge, to complete the AI lifecycle.

Developers building on Cloudflare Workers AI will be able to leverage MLflow compatible models for easy deployment into Cloudflare’s global network. Developers can use MLflow to efficiently package, implement, deploy and track a model directly into Cloudflare’s serverless developer platform.

“Cloudflare’s new Workers AI platform is the first end-to-end serverless solution to deploy AI at the edge,” said Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder, Cloudflare. “Together with Databricks we can offer a comprehensive and optimized platform to support a wide spectrum of AI workflows, models and applications.”

“We are excited that Cloudflare will be supporting MLflow, enabling customers to quickly and easily deploy the models they trained on Databricks directly to the edge with Cloudflare,” said Craig Wiley, Sr. Director of AI/ML Product at Databricks. “Cloudflare’s new edge deployment capabilities expand the value of MLflow to a broad set of new use cases.”

To learn more, please check out the resources below:

• Register to reserve your access to Workers AI
• Blog: Workers AI: The inference cloud running on GPUs on Cloudflare’s network
• Blog: The best place on Region: Earth for inference
• Learn how to build full-stack AI applications with Cloudflare at AI.cloudflare.com

About Cloudflare

Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET) is the leading connectivity cloud company. 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 https://radar.cloudflare.com.

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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 Workers AI, R2 and Cloudflare’s other products and technology, the benefits to Cloudflare’s customers from using Cloudflare Workers AI, R2 and Cloudflare’s other products and technology, Cloudflare’s expected partnership with Databricks and the potential resulting benefits to Cloudflare customers, the potential benefits to customers from the expected ability to integrate Cloudflare and Databricks products and technology, the potential opportunity for Cloudflare to attract additional customers and to expand sales to existing customers through Cloudflare’s expected partnership and product and technology integrations with Databricks, 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 August 3, 2023, as well as other filings that Cloudflare may make from time to time with the SEC.

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