Prior to 2020, we expected essentially every team member of Cloudflare to be present in one of our offices five days a week. That worked well for us and helped facilitate the launch of dozens of technologies as well as a community and culture that defined who we are.

Like every other team on the planet, the COVID pandemic forced us to revisit that approach. We used the time to think about what our offices could be, in a world where not every team member showed up every day of the week. While we decided we would be open to remote and hybrid work, we still felt like some of our best work was done in person together. The goal became building spaces that encouraged team members to be present.

Several hard hats and a few leases later, we’ve created a network of offices around the world designed to evolve with the way people work. These spaces aren’t just places to sit — they’re environments that empower people to do their best work — whether that means quiet focus, creative problem-solving, or lively collaboration. From a library tucked into a quiet zone in our waterfront Lisbon office, to the high-ceilinged collaboration areas in the heart of Austin, each office reflects our belief that great spaces support diverse working styles and help teams thrive together.

Our offices are meant to connect our teams, and we believe that by opening our doors to the wider community, we can foster even more innovation and help new companies collaborate better. Cloudflare has always been a hub for builders, and now we're making that commitment official by welcoming startups into our physical spaces.

Our spaces have served as hosts to community events since the earliest days of Cloudflare. We have brought together just about every group from hackathons to language meet-ups to university orientation sessions. Cloudflare exists to help build a better Internet and in many cases a better digital environment starts with relationships built in a real life environment.

One of the most common pieces of feedback we have received in the last few years after hosting these events is “I really miss connecting with people like this.” And we hear that most often from small teams in the earliest stages of their journey. In the last few years as the start-ups we support with our platform increasingly begin remote-first and only open dedicated spaces in later stages of their growth.

We know that building a company can be a lonely path. We have helped over the last several years by providing a robust free plan and a comprehensive start-up program, but we think we can do more.

Cloudflare’s network supports a significant percentage of the Internet and, as you would expect, the Internet follows the sun. More people use it during the daytime than at night, meaning our data center utilization peaks in specific times of the day. We take advantage of that pattern to run services that are less latency-sensitive in regions overnight.

Our physical locations follow a similar pattern. Utilization resembles a bell curve with Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays seeing a lot of traffic while Mondays and Fridays tend to be quieter. Like our CPUs at night, we think we can use that excess capacity to help build a better Internet by giving builders a space to congregate and helping our team connect with more of our users.

Beginning in January of 2026, we plan to make our office locations available to a capped number of external visitors as all-day coworking spaces on select days of each week. We will provide a registration process (more on that below) and set some ground rules. To start, we plan to expand this offering to San Francisco, Austin, London, and Lisbon.

When external visitors arrive, they’ll have access to our common spaces to bring together their teams or just get some work done by themselves. No mandatory talks or obligations. Just fantastic working spaces available to use at no cost.

We will provide more details in the next few weeks, but the general structure will be based on the following steps.

1. Enroll in the Cloudflare for Startups Program. Bonus if you are a Workers Launchpad participant or alumni.

2. Sit tight for now. We will email participating Startup Program customers first to participate with a form requesting office access.

3. Once the form is filled out, a member of our team will reach out after. If you want to get a head start, fill out the form here.

4. We plan to roll this out on a cohort basis. Once approved and all requirements are met, register your visit (and that of any additional team members) at least three business days prior to the date requested.

5. Respect our working spaces as you would your own.

We hope to expand to other locations in the future. Want to get to the front of the line? Sign up for our Startup program here today and we will reach out to Startup Program participants before we roll out the program.

These wave machines are a new source of entropy, joining lava lamps in San Francisco, suspended rainbows in Austin, and double chaotic pendulums in London. The entropy they generate contributes to securing the Internet through LavaRand.

^{The new waves wall at Cloudflare’s Lisbon office sits beside the Radar Display of global Internet insights, with the 25th of April Bridge overlooking the Tagus River in the background.}

It’s exciting to see waves in Portugal now playing a role in keeping the Internet secure, especially given Portugal’s deep maritime history.

The installation honors Portugal’s passion for the sea and exploration of the unknown, famously beginning over 600 years ago, in 1415, with pioneering vessels like caravels and naus/carracks, precursors to galleons and other ships. Portuguese sea exploration was driven by navigation schools and historic voyages “through seas never sailed before” (“Por mares nunca dantes navegados” in Portuguese), as described by Portugal’s famous poet, Luís Vaz de Camões, born 500 years ago (1524).

Anyone familiar with Portugal knows the sea is central to its identity. The small country has 980 km of coastline, where most of its main cities are located. Maritime areas make up 90% of its territory, including the mid-Atlantic Azores. In 1998, Lisbon’s Expo 98 celebrated the oceans and this maritime heritage. Since 2011, the small town of Nazaré also became globally famous among the surfing community for its giant waves.

^{Nazaré’s waves, famous since Garrett McNamara’s 23.8 m (78 ft) ride in 2011, hold Guinness World Records for the biggest waves ever surfed. Photos: Sam Khawasé & Beatriz Paula, from Cloudflare.}

Portugal’s maritime culture also inspired literature and music, including poet Fernando Pessoa, who referenced it in his 1934 book Mensagem, and musician Rui Veloso, who dedicated his 1990s album Auto da Pimenta to Portugal’s historic connection to the sea.

As Cloudflare’s CEO, Matthew Prince, said recently, this new wall of entropy began with an idea back in 2023: “What could we use for randomness that was like our lava lamp wall in San Francisco but represented our team in Portugal?”

The original inspiration came from wave motion machine desk toys, which were popular among some of our team members. Waves and the ocean not only provide a source of movement and randomness, but also align with Portugal’s maritime history and the office’s scenic view.

However, this was easier said than done. It turns out that making a wave machine wall is a real challenge, given that these toys are not as popular as they were in the past,  and aren’t being manufactured in the size we needed any more. We scoured eBay and other sources but couldn't find enough, consistent in style and in working order wave machines. We also discovered that off-the-shelf models weren’t designed to run 24/7, which was a critical requirement for our use.

Undaunted, Cloudflare’s Places team, which ensures our offices reflect our values and culture, found a U.S.-based artisan that specializes in ocean wave displays to create the wave machines for us. Since 2009, his one-person business, Hughes Wave Motion Machines, has blended artistry, engineering, and research, following his transition from Lockheed Martin Space Systems, where he designed military and commercial satellites.

^{Timelapse of the mesmerizing office waves, set to the tune of an AI-generated song.}

Collaborating closely, we developed a custom rectangular wave machine (18 inches/45 cm long) that runs nonstop — not an easy task — which required hundreds of hours of testing and many iterations. Featuring rotating wheels, continuous motors, and a unique fluid formula, these machines create realistic ocean-like waves in green, blue, and Cloudflare’s signature orange. 

Here’s a quote from the artist himself about these wave machines:

“The machine’s design is a balancing act of matching components and their placement to how the fluid responds in a given configuration. There is a complex yet delicate relationship between viscosity, specific gravity, the size and design of the vessel, and the placement of each mechanical interface. Everything must be precisely aligned, centered around the fluid like a mathematical function. I like to say it’s akin to ’balancing a checkerboard on a beach ball in the wind.’”

^{The Cloudflare Places Team with Lisbon office architects and contractor testing wave machine placement, shelves, lighting, and mirrors to enhance movement and reflection, March 2024.}

Despite delays, the Lisbon wave machines finally debuted on March 10, 2025 — an incredibly exciting moment for the Places team.

Some numbers about our wave-machine entropy wall:

• 50 wave machines, 50 motion wheels & motors, 50 acrylic containers filled with Hughes Wave Fluid Formula (two immiscible liquids)

• 3 liquid colors: blue, green, and orange

• 15 months from concept to completion

• 14 flips (side-to-side balancing movements) per minute — over 20,000 per day

• Over 15 waves per minute

• ~0.5 liters of liquid per machine

Cloudflare’s servers handle 71 million HTTP requests per second on average, with 100 million HTTP requests per second at peak. Most of these requests are secured via TLS, which relies on secure randomness for cryptographic integrity. A Cryptographically Secure Pseudorandom Number Generator (CSPRNG) ensures unpredictability, but only when seeded with high-quality entropy. Since chaotic movement in the real world is truly random, Cloudflare designed a system to harness it. Our 2024 blog post expands on this topic in a more technical way, but here’s a quick summary.

In 2017, Cloudflare launched LavaRand, inspired by Silicon Graphics’ 1997 concept However, the need for randomness in security was already a hot topic on our blog before that, such as in our discussions of securing systems and cryptography. Originally, LavaRand collected entropy from a wall of lava lamps in our San Francisco office, feeding an internal API that servers periodically query to include in their entropy pools. Over time, we expanded LavaRand beyond lava lamps, incorporating new sources of office chaos while maintaining the same core method.

A camera captures images of dynamic, unpredictable randomness displays. Shadows, lighting changes, and even sensor noise contribute entropy. Each image is then processed into a compact hash, converting it into a sequence of random bytes. These, combined with the previous seed and local system entropy, serve as input for a Key Derivation Function (KDF), which generates a new seed for a CSPRNG — capable of producing virtually unlimited random bytes upon request. The waves in our Lisbon office are now contributing to this pool of randomness.

Cloudflare’s LavaRand API makes this randomness accessible internally, strengthening cryptographic security across our global infrastructure. For example, when you use Math.random() in Cloudflare Workers, part of that randomness comes from LavaRand. Similarly, querying our drand API taps into LavaRand as well. Cloudflare offers this API to enable anyone to generate random numbers and even seed their own systems.

^{Photo of the view from our Lisbon office, featuring ceiling lights arranged in a wave-like pattern.}

Entropy also inspired the design ethos of our new Lisbon office, given that the wall of waves and the office are part of the same project. As soon as you enter, you're greeted not only by the motion of the entropy wall but also by the constant movement of planet Earth on our Cloudflare Radar Display screen that stands next to it. But the waves don’t stop there — more elements throughout the space mimic the dynamic flow of the Internet itself. Unlike ocean tides, however, Internet traffic ebbs and flows with the motion of the Sun, not the Moon.

As you walk through the office, waves are everywhere — in the ceiling lights, the architectural contours, and even the floor plan, thoughtfully designed by our architect to reflect the fluid movement of water. The visual elements create a cohesive experience, reinforcing a sense of motion. Each meeting room embraces this maritime theme, named after famous Portuguese beaches — including, naturally, Nazaré.

We partnered with an incredible group of local Portuguese vendors for this construction project, where all the leads were women — something incredibly rare for the industry. The local teams worked with passion, proudly wore Cloudflare t-shirts, and fostered a warm, family-like atmosphere. They openly expressed pride in the project, sharing how it stood out from anything they had worked on before.

^{Our amazing third-party team and internal Places team, proudly rocking Cloudflare shirts after bringing this project to life.}

Next, we have several name options for this new wall of entropy. Help us decide the best one, and register your vote using this form.

The Surf Board

Chaos Reef

Waves of Entropy

Wall of Waves

Whirling Wave Wall

Chaotic Wave Wall

Waves of Chaos

If you’re interested in working in Cloudflare’s Lisbon office, we’re hiring! Our career page lists our open roles in Lisbon, as well as our other locations in the U.S., Mexico, Europe and Asia.

^{Acknowledgements: This project was only possible with the effort, vision and help of John Graham-Cumming, Caroline Quick, Jen Preston, Laura Atwall, Carolina Beja, Hughes Wave Motion Machines, P4 Planning and Project Management, Gensler Europe, Openbook Architecture, and Vector Mais.}

At Cloudflare, we are working hard to ensure that we are making a positive impact on the surrounding environment, with the goal of building the most sustainable network. At the same time, we want to make sure that the positive changes that we are making are also something that our local Cloudflare team members can touch and feel, and know that in each of our actions we are having a positive impact on the environment around us. This is why we make sustainability one of the underlying goals of the design, construction, and operations of our global office spaces.

To make this type of pervasive change we have focused our efforts in three main areas: working with sustainable construction materials, efficient operations, and renewable energy purchasing (using clean sources like sunlight and wind). We believe that sustainable design goes far beyond just purchasing recycled and regenerative products. If you don’t operate your space with efficiency and renewables in mind, we haven’t fully accounted for all of our environmental impact.

__“The Retreat” in the San Francisco Cloudflare office, featuring preserved moss and live plants__‌‌

Since 2020, we have been redefining how our teams work together, and how work takes place in physical spaces. You may have read last year about how we are thinking about the future of work at Cloudflare - and the experimentation that we are doing within our physical environments. Sustainable and healthy spaces are a major element to this concept.

We are excited to highlight a few of the different products and concepts that are currently being used in the development of our workplaces - both new locations and in the reimagination of our existing spaces. While experimenting with the way that our teams work together in person, we also consider our new and updated spaces a sort of sustainability learning lab. As we get more and more data on these different systems, we plan to expand these concepts to other global locations as we continue to think through the future of the in-office experience at Cloudflare.

An example of sustainable acoustic baffles as seen in our San Francisco office

It’s our goal to have the products, furniture, and systems that make up our offices be sustainable in a way that is pleasantly (and surprisingly) pervasive. Their materials, construction, and transportation should have either a minimal, or regenerative, impact on the environment or the waste stream while also meeting high performance standards. A great example of this is the acoustic sound baffling used in our recent San Francisco and London redesign and currently being installed at our newest office, which is under construction.

If you’ve ever worked in an open office, you know that effective sound management is critical, regardless of if the space is for collaborative or focus work. In order to help with this challenge, we use a substantial number of acoustic baffles to help significantly reduce sound transfer. Traditionally, baffles are made out of tightly woven synthetic fibers. Unfortunately, a majority of baffles on the market today generate new plastic in the waste stream.

We chose to move away from traditional baffles by installing FilaSorb acoustic baffles by AcouFelt. The fibers in FilaSorb are made from post-consumer plastic beverage bottles diverted from landfills. Every square foot of our FilaSorb felt contains the regenerated fibers made from over 10, 20oz recycled bottles. Each panel has a useful life of over twenty years, and at the end of its life the panel can be recycled again.

The International Institute of Living Futures has certified that this product is acceptable for the Living Building Challenge, which is the most rigorous regenerative building standard in the world.

Similarly to FilaSorb, we also installed BAUX Acoustic Wood Wool paneling to provide additional sound dampening and a vibrant acoustic wall treatment. Designed using a process that focuses on recarbonation, BAUX Wood Wool panels absorb over 6.9 kg per meter squared of carbon dioxide. That’s a little over 70% of the total measured CO2 released during the entire manufacturing life cycle of the panel. Beyond their acoustic benefits, Wood Wool panels resist heat and are ideal insulators. This enables us to use less energy in heating and cooling to maintain a stable temperature in fluctuating weather.

Interface’s Net Effect Carpet Collection uses discarded fishing nets in their construction

Flooring is also a significant focus of our design team. We wanted to find a high wearing material that had brilliant color that also had strong regenerative properties across the full manufacturing lifecycle. We were very fortunate to have found Interface’s Net Effect Collection. Interface is one of the few fully certified carbon-neutral flooring materials providers.

Their Net Effect collection is made with 100% recycled content nylon, including postconsumer nylon from discarded fishing nets gathered through their Net-Works® partnership. Net-Works provides a source of income for small fishing villages in the Philippines while cleaning up their beaches and waters. The collected nets are sold to Aquafil, who, in turn, converts them into yarn for Interface carpet tile.

One shocking stat specifically has stood out to our team over the past two and half years as we have been rethinking our office spaces. 8.5 million tons of office furniture ends up in the landfill per year. That number was before the global pandemic completely redefined how companies think about their real estate footprints and shuttered a massive amount of office space in the United States. Major US cities like San Francisco and New York City still have commercial office vacancy rates upwards of 30% at the time of publishing. To do our part to keep furniture out of landfills, we are ensuring that we are reusing (and in some cases completely repurposing) our existing furniture portfolio as much as possible in every one of our projects.

We have taken it a step further to include our employees working from home. We commonly lend out office chairs and other unused office furniture to home office workers so that they don’t have to purchase new office furniture.

Rainwater harvesting system at our San Francisco office

We haven’t just been thinking about how our construction materials can have a more positive impact on the environment. We’ve also been incredibly focused on trialing a number of different sustainable operations concepts within our spaces.

For instance, we have installed a 500 gallon rainwater harvesting system above our outdoor bike storage in our San Francisco office, designed to support our internal gray water needs. We understand the importance of natural light and plants within our spaces to help encourage the health and wellbeing of our teammates, thus we have a vast amount of plants in our San Francisco office. While we chose our plants for their low water consumption, they still require water. Our rain water capture system provides the water for all of our plants.

Additionally, we are focused on cultural changes amongst our staff to reduce our waste streams (which was no small feat amongst our die-hard LaCroix fans!). We have adopted Bevi sparkling and flavored water dispensing machines alongside traditional soda fountains to fully remove bottled water from our facilities. We also shifted to bulk snacks to further reduce the packaging entering recycling centers and landfills.

Our San Francisco office is also giving us direct on the ground exposure to the complexities of renewable power sourcing in a shared grid environment. In order to guarantee we are using all renewable energy, we purchase our power through Pacific Gas and Electric’s Supergreen Service. But we don’t just stop there. To ensure that our energy usage is totally based on renewable power, we take our efforts a step further and separately purchase renewable energy as if we didn’t already have sustainable power.

We are just getting started on our sustainability journey at Cloudflare. Over the next few years, we will continue to design, develop, and deploy a variety of different solutions to help make our offices as regenerative as possible. To leave you with a taste of where we are headed in 2023, I am excited to introduce you to a project that we are all very excited about: EntroBees. As you have likely heard, the global bee population has dropped dramatically, and a quarter of the bee species are at risk of extinction. We want to do our part to help encourage bees to thrive in urban environments.

Slated for installation at one of our global office locations, EntroBees will be fully managed onsite honey bee colonies. These colonies will provide a much-needed habitat for urban bees, produce honey for our local employees, and also serve as an additional source of entropy for our LavaRand system that provides the source of randomness for Cloudflare’s entire encryption system.