Cloudflare Announces Public Certificate Authority for the Post-Quantum Web

Automated certificates for everyone, built for today, and hardened for the era of quantum computing

SAN FRANCISCO, September 29, 2026--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the leading connectivity cloud company, today announced its intent to become a public Certificate Authority (CA), an open service that issues the digital certificates websites need to encrypt traffic and prove their identity to visitors. The new CA will support both traditional encryption and next-generation post-quantum Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs), giving every website a path to stay protected as computing power advances—with no new tools or rebuilds required. Additionally, Cloudflare has agreed to acquire established, publicly trusted Root CA key material from GlobalSign, which will provide ubiquity across the global Web PKI ecosystem.

Every secure website depends on a certificate authority to verify its identity and enable encrypted connections. Today, that trust is concentrated in a small number of dominant issuers, creating systemic risk if any one of them fails or is compromised. At the same time, most certificate infrastructure was built before quantum computing became a practical concern. Quantum computers capable of breaking today's encryption are expected within years, and much of the web is not prepared for that shift.