Cloudflare, Inc. has launched Identity-Aware AI Gateway and User Insights, two new capabilities designed to help organisations monitor, govern and analyse the use of AI across their enterprise environments. The tools provide IT and security teams with visibility into which employees or AI agents are using AI services, the type of requests being made and associated usage costs.
According to Cloudflare, enterprise AI adoption has led to growing concerns around escalating usage costs and limited visibility into how employees and automated systems interact with external AI models. Existing tools typically provide spending controls at an organisational level but lack user-level insights into AI activity.
Identity-Aware AI Gateway links every AI request to a verified employee or automated system through Cloudflare Access, enabling organisations to identify who initiated requests and apply identity-based access controls. The accompanying User Insights capability establishes behavioural baselines for users and automated systems, allowing IT teams to detect unusual AI activity, including unexpected increases in usage or spending.
The platform also enables organisations to analyse whether employees are using high-performance AI models for tasks that could be handled by smaller, lower-cost alternatives, helping optimise AI expenditure. In addition, companies can integrate the gateway with their existing identity providers and Zero Trust infrastructure to authenticate users and devices before requests are sent to external AI providers.
Cloudflare said the platform also centralises AI traffic management, allowing organisations to monitor requests across multiple AI providers, apply rate limits, cache repeated requests and automatically remove sensitive information such as employee names, passwords and confidential data before requests leave the enterprise environment.
Commenting on the launch, Dane Knecht, CTO of Cloudflare, said: “When security is clunky, it becomes a speed bump that slows down innovation. Right now, companies are wary of surprise AI bills or accidental data leaks, so their instinct is to lock down access and restrict what teams can build. Connecting our access controls directly to AI Gateway flips that dynamic. Teams get the freedom to work with any AI model they choose. IT gets real-time visibility, guardrails, and the budget controls they actually need.”
Max Baumgarten, Security Engineer at Flexport, added: “Shared API keys make it almost impossible to tell who is using an AI service or apply the access rules we already have for employees. Putting Cloudflare Access in front of AI Gateway gives each request an authenticated identity and lets us use our existing identity policies at the gateway. Our teams can adopt AI tools without creating a separate authentication system for every client.”