The rise of AI agents is fueling a massive surge in global web traffic, turning the quiet work of internet infrastructure into a lucrative frontier for investors. On a recent episode of Mad Money, CNBC’s Jim Cramer highlighted how the explosion of automated AI activity requires specialized services to keep the internet stable and fast. This shift has put a spotlight on three primary players known as internet traffic cops, namely Cloudflare, Akamai Technologies, and Fastly, all of whom have significantly outperformed the S&P 500 so far this year.
While these companies are all riding the AI wave, Cramer warns that not every stock is currently priced for success. He noted that Cloudflare has seen staggering growth, with CEO Matthew Prince revealing that AI agent traffic has already overtaken human traffic on their restwork. However, because Cloudflare is trading at roughly 279 times its expected earnings, Cramer suggests that patient investors wait for a price pullback before jumping in. Similarly, he views Fastly as too volatile and expensive at 50 times earnings despite its strategic pivot toward an edge cloud platform designed to reduce latency for AI users.
In contrast, Cramer believes Akamai Technologies represents the best value play in the sector right now. The company recently secured a massive eleven point six billion dollar commitment from Anthropic to expand computing capacity over the next seven years. Despite this major win and a strategy focused on processing AI workloads closer to end users through smaller data centers, the stock remains relatively affordable at less than sixteen times expected earnings. According to Cramer, the current price effectively gives investors the Anthropic partnership for free, making it the only stock among the trio he feels confident recommending as an immediate buy.