Dane Knecht

Since becoming Chief Technology Officer in March 2025, Dane Knecht has led Cloudflare’s effort to build infrastructure that enables enterprises to develop and deploy AI agents securely.

A key part of his mandate is advancing Cloudflare’s AI developer platform and expanding the tools enterprises need to build, deploy, and govern AI agents securely. This includes capabilities that help agents connect with enterprise data, authentication systems, and existing applications while maintaining security, performance, and control at scale.

Knecht has spent more than a decade at Cloudflare, joining in 2012 as Head of Product before leading several product and engineering organizations, most recently as Senior Vice President of Emerging Technology and Incubation. Earlier in his career, he served as Co-Founder and Vice President of Product Management at Tippr, and worked in DevOps and product management MessageOne, subsequently moving to work in Special Projects at Dell upon their acquisition of the company.

As CTO, Knecht oversees the technical foundation for enterprise AI agents, including secure identity, data access, developer tooling, and platform integration. The strategy builds on Cloudflare’s global network and security infrastructure to provide enterprises with a platform where AI agents can securely access data, interact with applications, and operate at scale across distributed environments.

“The next phase of enterprise AI will be defined less by who has the largest model and more by who can run AI securely, efficiently, and close to where work happens. Agents will turn AI from a standalone capability into the connective tissue across enterprise systems, teams, and workflows,” Knecht said.