A global outage at web-infrastructure firm Cloudflare (NET.N) began to ease on Tuesday after blocking thousands of users from accessing major internet platforms, including X, Canva, Grindr, and ChatGPT.
Cloudflare, which manages roughly one-fifth of global web traffic, said it detected internal service degradation around 6:40 a.m. ET. The company deployed a fix but warned that some customers may continue to experience disruptions as systems recover.
The outage marked the latest disruption to major online services. Just last month, Amazonโs cloud platform suffered a breakdown that left thousands of websites and appsโincluding Snapchat and Redditโtemporarily inaccessible.
Cloudflare shares fell about 5% in premarket trading following Tuesdayโs incident. The company operates one of the worldโs largest networks, designed to keep websites and apps online by accelerating traffic and shielding them from surges and cyberattacks.
According to outage-tracking site Downdetector, reports of Cloudflare-related issues peaked at nearly 5,000 before dropping to about 600 by 8 a.m. ET. The tool compiles user-submitted reports, meaning the actual number of affected users may vary.
In a statement, Cloudflare explained:
โWe saw a spike in unusual traffic to one of Cloudflareโs services beginning at 11:20 UTC. That caused some traffic passing through Cloudflareโs network to experience errors. We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors.โ
Neither X nor ChatGPT developer OpenAI immediately responded to requests for comment.
