Matthew Prince Net Worth

Matthew Prince has an estimated net worth of $8.6 billion, according to Forbes Real-Time Billionaires, Matthew Prince profile (figures as of October 20, 2026). That is up from $2.5 billion in 2021.

Matthew Prince is an American business executive best known for helping build Cloudflare, a web infrastructure and security company. Before that, he taught law and worked on tools aimed at blocking spam. The 2003 CAN-SPAM Act helped push him toward that work. He later created Unspam and Project Honey Pot, which gathered data on bad online activity. In 2009, he started Cloudflare with Michelle Zatlyn and Lee Holloway.

Cloudflare became the center of Prince's fortune. He serves as CEO and owns about 8% of the company. He also helped take it public in 2019. Before the public offering, the company drew backing from CapitalG, Microsoft, Baidu, and Qualcomm Ventures. Forbes tracks Prince in the technology industry, tied to cybersecurity, and values him at $8.6 billion on its real-time billionaires tracker as of October 20, 2026.

How Matthew Prince built his fortune

Prince made his money by building Cloudflare into a major internet security and infrastructure business. He cofounded the company in 2009 and still leads it as CEO. His wealth is tied mainly to his ownership stake, which Forbes says is about 8%. Because Cloudflare is a public company, changes in its market value can have a direct effect on how Forbes estimates his fortune.

His path to Cloudflare started with online abuse and spam. Prince was a law professor before Cloudflare and also cofounded Unspam Technologies, a business that helped clients block spam content. He also created Project Honey Pot with Lee Holloway. That work gave him data and experience in internet threats, which helped shape Cloudflare. Earlier, he also worked as a ski instructor in Park City, Utah.

What Forbes says about his net worth

Forbes has raised and lowered its estimate of Prince's fortune over time. It put him at $2.5 billion in 2021, then $3.2 billion in 2022, before dropping to $2 billion in 2023. The estimate later moved up to $3.4 billion in 2024, then $4.2 billion in 2025, and $5.5 billion in 2026 on the World's Billionaires List.

The latest jump came on Forbes' real-time tracker, which showed Prince at $8.6 billion in October 2026. The main reason is straightforward: his money is closely connected to Cloudflare, and Forbes notes that he owns about 8% of the company. As CEO, he remains central to the business, but the estimate itself is mostly about the value of that stake rather than a wide mix of separate holdings.