Cloudflare, Inc. (NET) and JD Cloud, the cloud computing division affiliated with JD.com, Inc. (JD), announced they're deepening a partnership that's been running for about five years now. The goal? Make it dramatically easier for developers to deploy and scale AI inference workloads across global markets, particularly bridging the gap between China and everywhere else.
Here's the headline promise: the enhanced collaboration could slash latency for AI inference workloads by as much as 80%. That's a meaningful improvement when AI-driven applications are exploding worldwide and everyone wants their models running fast, no matter where their users happen to be.
The partnership is essentially about creating a more unified, high-performance AI cloud. International developers get better access to users in China, while Chinese developers can more easily reach customers abroad. It's addressing a real pain point as AI applications increasingly need to work seamlessly across borders.
How It Actually Works
The technical setup is cleverly straightforward. By combining Cloudflare's global connectivity cloud with JD Cloud's regional infrastructure in China, developers get simplified deployment and improved performance without the usual headaches of cross-border operations.
Through the existing integration that's been refined over five years, customers can enable services in China without rewriting a single line of application code. User traffic from China automatically routes to JD Cloud-operated data centers, while traffic from elsewhere flows through Cloudflare's global network. It's smart routing that happens behind the scenes.
This architecture is designed to reduce latency while keeping security and reliability intact, backed by Cloudflare's Web Application Firewall, DDoS mitigation capabilities, and its extensive global content delivery network.
What Leadership Is Saying
Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince framed the partnership as removing the technical and operational barriers that typically slow down global AI development. The pitch is giving developers a more reliable foundation to build and run AI applications at scale across different regions without the usual friction.
JD Cloud positioned the expanded collaboration as aligned with its mission to deliver advanced, market-leading services. Leveraging JD.com's operational experience and infrastructure muscle, the company sees this as strengthening its ability to support businesses navigating complex, global technology requirements.
It's worth noting this isn't a brand-new relationship suddenly appearing. This builds on roughly five years of working together, which means they've had time to iron out the kinks and actually understand how enterprises need this technology to function.
NET Price Action: Cloudflare shares were down 1.53% at $194.50 at the time of publication on Wednesday.