New York, February 21, 2026, 10:01 EST — The market is closed.
- Cloudflare shares slid 8% Friday, with the company citing connectivity issues.
- Only certain “bring your own IP” (BYOIP) routes were affected—a feature some customers rely on to maintain their personal address blocks.
- Investors are looking to Monday for a more detailed incident report, and will be keeping an eye out for signs of customer reaction.
Cloudflare shares slid 8.05% to close at $177.14 on Friday, marking the stock’s steepest single-day decline in several weeks. The web-infrastructure provider disclosed connectivity problems during the session. (Cloudflare)
Timing is crucial here: Cloudflare’s core business is uptime. If a company that’s supposed to keep internet traffic flowing hits bumps, investors usually trim the reliability premium. This isn’t the first stumble, either — Cloudflare disclosed a different routing mistake just last month. (The Cloudflare Blog)
Cloudflare reported it was looking into issues hitting its network and services, before confirming it had pinpointed the problem with a subset of BYOIP prefixes and “mitigated the underlying issue.” By late Friday, the company marked the incident as resolved, though it cautioned that certain customers might have had to re-advertise IP ranges to get service back online. (Cloudflare Status)
With BYOIP—Cloudflare’s “bring your own IP”—customers can move their own IP address blocks onto Cloudflare’s network. The company then broadcasts, or “announces,” those blocks globally via BGP, the protocol that steers internet traffic. If Cloudflare’s route announcements are withdrawn or sent out incorrectly, sites or apps relying on those IPs may abruptly go offline, appearing unreachable. (Cloudflare Docs)
Downstream users felt the impact almost immediately. Laravel Cloud reported a connectivity outage that stretched for roughly three hours, after Cloudflare’s incident pulled IP-prefix ads that normally route traffic its way. (Laravel)
U.S. markets are shut Saturday, so the focus shifts to Monday, February 23, when trading is back on. Traders want to see if Cloudflare offers a clearer explanation—what went wrong, just how far it impacted users outside BYOIP, and whether word of the incident is circulating among customers. Any hint clients might be moving important traffic to other providers will also be watched closely.
Outage stories rarely start tidy. A status marked “resolved” doesn’t guarantee the trouble’s over; customers wrestling with aftershocks may rethink their dependence on a single provider, or get stricter about contract terms and backup options — moves that can pressure a growth story.
This looks more like traders weighing in on trust than any real shift in Cloudflare’s longer-term demand outlook. The market forgets quickly—unless it decides not to.
Eyes turn to Monday’s open, with markets also watching for Cloudflare’s next incident report after Friday’s BYOIP disruption. Any updates from the company are expected in the coming days.
