Cloudflare has announced that it is acquiring The Astro Technology Company, the team behind the popular Astro web framework. As part of the deal, Astro will remain open source and continue to be developed under Cloudflare’s stewardship. It shows Cloudflare’s growing focus on performance-focused web development and long-term support for open source tools.
Astro is widely used by major brands such as Unilever, Visa, and NBC News, along with hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide. The framework is designed for content-driven websites where speed matters the most. Instead of loading large amounts of JavaScript upfront, Astro only sends the most critical code needed to render a page. This approach helps websites load faster, which can improve search rankings and increase user engagement and conversions.
Cloudflare says the goal of this acquisition is to secure a sustainable future for Astro and ensure it remains the leading framework for content-heavy websites. The company has already been working closely with the Astro team, including collaboration on the beta release of Astro 6. This new version adds support for more JavaScript runtimes, improves overall performance, and reduces build times for developers.
Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, highlighted the importance of open source software in keeping the internet open and competitive. He said that investing in impactful tools like Astro aligns with Cloudflare’s mission to build a faster and more reliable web. From Astro’s side, CEO Fred Schott said that joining Cloudflare will allow the team to scale development faster while keeping Astro flexible and usable across different hosting platforms, not just Cloudflare.
Astro already plays an important role in platforms like Webflow and Wix, both of which run on Cloudflare’s infrastructure. Cloudflare has also confirmed that it will continue supporting community contributions through the Astro Ecosystem Fund, alongside partners such as Netlify, Wix, Webflow, and Sentry. This suggests that Astro will remain a community-first project rather than a closed, vendor-locked tool.
I think the deal is happening because Cloudflare wants to move closer to developers and the tools they use to build modern websites. Cloudflare already controls a large part of how websites are delivered through its network, security, and performance services. By bringing Astro into the company, Cloudflare gains influence earlier in the web development process, at the framework level.
This acquisition could help Cloudflare in two key ways. First, it strengthens Cloudflare’s position as a performance-focused platform. Second, it helps Cloudflare build deeper trust with developers by supporting a popular open source framework instead of replacing it with a proprietary alternative.
