TL;DR
Bots now generate the majority of traffic on high-tech websites.
AI crawlers are targeting the industry at more than double the global rate, driven by a demand for technical content, APIs, and proprietary data.
Unwanted automation is increasing, creating security, performance, and cost challenges for technology organizations.
Bot traffic now affects every layer of the tech stack – from infrastructure and application security to analytics, intellectual property, and AI strategy.
The winners in the agentic web won’t block every bot, they’ll strategically decide which ones deserve access.
Fastly’s latest Threat Insights Report, AI, Bots, and the Agentic Future of the Web, explores how AI, bots, and automation are reshaping the internet – and found that nearly half of all internet requests now come from bots. One of the clearest takeaways from the report is that every industry is experiencing AI differently. Some are seeing more malicious automation. Others are navigating new operational and infrastructure challenges as “wanted” bots like AI completely shift their operating model.
For the high tech industry, the implications are particularly pressing: Technology companies sit at the center of the digital economy. While for most industries websites serve primarily informational purposes, high tech organizations rely on applications, APIs, cloud services, and digital platforms as core revenue-generating assets. As AI crawlers, automated agents, and malicious bots increasingly interact with these systems, they can drive up infrastructure costs, consume valuable compute and bandwidth resources, and degrade performance for legitimate users. Not to mention their desire to pilfer high value or proprietary IP and data.
These compounding concerns mark high tech one of the industries facing the most immediate strategic implications from AI-driven traffic.
The State of AI Bots and Automated Traffic in High Tech
AI bots are actively scraping content and proprietary data, raising concerns around protecting intellectual property and preventing unauthorized model training. At the same time, malicious automation is strengthening credential attacks, API abuse, vulnerability scanning, and other threats that target high-value assets.
As automated traffic grows, high tech organizations must defend against harmful bots while also distinguishing between beneficial automation and unwanted activity, making bot management a critical component of overarching security, performance, and business strategies.
The numbers in our latest report reveal that high tech has:
21% less human traffic than the global baseline
22% more unwanted bot traffic than the global baseline
4% less wanted bot traffic than the global baseline
20% of the high-tech industry’s wanted bot traffic is attributable to AI. This is 136% more than the global baseline.
So what do these numbers mean? And what are the AI and bot traffic implications to high tech more broadly? We’ve provided our takes in the following sections.
Why High-Tech Companies Are Prime Targets for AI Crawlers and Bots
First, a bit of background.
The following context helps highlight the importance of the report’s findings and their implications for high tech sites.
Massive attack surface
High tech orgs grapple with a large volume of APIs and applications, comprising a massive digital footprint. This scale means greater exposure and a corresponding need for greater coverage. This creates a much larger attack surface and significantly higher exposure to automated traffic compared to other industries.
Added complexity from APIs
APIs are central to the high tech business model. Unlike industries where websites are primarily informational (and environments less complex), high tech companies rely heavily on APIs for product functionality, integrations, AI services and more.
Bots targeting APIs can directly impact product performance, service reliability, and revenue-generating workflows. The result is a more attractive attack target, and a more complex environment to secure.
Appetizing content
Technology companies are primary targets for AI crawlers and scrapers seeking training data, or trying to gather pricing intelligence, collect documentation, or proprietary content.
Credential stuffing, scraping and vulnerability scanning often target SaaS providers, cloud vendors, fintech platforms, and developer tools because successful compromises can yield high-value access or downstream customer exposure.
Infrastructure strain
Many tech companies run usage-based cloud environments where excess bot traffic immediately translates into higher compute, bandwidth, and CDN expenses. Even bots that aren’t outright malicious can dramatically increase operating costs at scale.
Analytics impacts
High tech organizations depend heavily on behavioral analytics, experimentation, product telemetry, and conversion data to make critical business and strategy decisions. Bot traffic can distort metrics that influence engineering, marketing, and broader business performance assessments.
Automation complexity
In high tech, a growing share of traffic is generated by automation - think CI/CD, AI agents, integrations, observability tools, and crawlers. This blurs the line between “good” and “bad” bots, making classification and policy enforcement significantly more complex than in other industries.
Performance implications
Users expect near-perfect reliability from technology platforms. When bots cause performance degradations and outages, customer confidence and loyalty can be significantly impacted.
Bot traffic affects every layer of the high tech stack - from infrastructure economics and cybersecurity to product analytics and AI strategy - making bot management a critical consideration for the high tech industry.
Key Findings: AI Traffic and Bot Activity in High-Tech
Spoiler: Everyone wants high tech’s data
Finding #1. Bots Now Outnumber Humans on High-Tech Websites
Our analysis uncovered a 43/57 split of human to bot traffic, respectively, in the high tech industry, with high tech seeing 21% less human traffic than the global baseline.
From source code to technical documentation, product roadmaps, research, AI models, and engineering knowledge - the high tech industry’s precious data can provide competitors, threat actors, or AI companies with insights that took years and millions of dollars to develop. Unlike consumer content, technical data is often unique and difficult to replicate, making it particularly valuable for training AI systems, accelerating product development, or gaining competitive intelligence.
Finding #2. AI Wants High-Tech's Data
Digging a bit deeper into the findings, we found that high tech saw 136% more AI traffic than the global baseline.
Our report found that there is overall very little ‘wanted’ traffic across the globe (~ 1% of all traffic, globally). Of that 1%, AI represents just 8%. While this seems like a small number, this is still trillions of requests. So while the scale here isn’t massive relative to the whole, the implications are still massive: With 136% more AI traffic than the baseline, this means huge traffic, business and risk implications for high tech.
Double the amount of AI traffic relative to all other industries is a high indication of the perceived value that AI places on the information these organizations own. It should prompt high tech industries to both block access to and protect the data they don't want getting out there, and ensure the data they DO want crawled is up to date and accurate, so as to reflect the strongest version of their business to the market.
Finding #3. High-tech is Attracting Unwanted Attention
The high-tech industry saw 22% more unwanted bot traffic than the global baseline, which reflects that value bad actors, competitors and the general public place on high tech’s proprietary data.
While the majority of ‘unwanted’ bot traffic isn’t necessarily malicious in nature, it still demands assessment to determine its implications and whether an organization truly wants it on their site(s).
High-tech companies expose large amounts of machine-readable data through websites, APIs, developer portals, and knowledge bases. This makes automated collection easier and more scalable than in many other industries.
Additionally, high-tech organizations often serve as gateways to broader ecosystems. A successful attack on a SaaS provider, cloud platform, developer tool, or technology vendor can provide access to customer environments, credentials, APIs, or sensitive business information from thousands of downstream organizations. This creates a multiplier effect that makes technology companies especially attractive targets.
The report highlights that there is much more general automation hitting these sites - and that organizations need visibility and business context to determine intent and subsequent security policies.
Four Steps High-Tech Organizations Can Take Today
High-tech companies face a unique challenge; protecting valuable intellectual property and digital assets while maintaining the openness, accessibility, and performance that their customers and developers expect. Adapting to AI-driven traffic isn’t about choosing between blocking everything or allowing it all. It’s about building a more intentional strategy around visibility, control, monetization, and protection.
Gain Visibility. Organizations need insight into: which bots are accessing content and what they’re retrieving, whether traffic is hitting cache or origin, and which activity aligns with business goals.
Go beyond blocking. Modern AI traffic requires more purpose-built controls than traditional allow/block approaches. Some automation may create visibility and revenue opportunities. Some may simply create cost and risk.
Consider monetizing AI traffic. As AI platforms continue seeking high-quality content, monetization strategies are becoming increasingly considered. Organizations with strong visibility and governance controls will be best positioned to decide how AI access supports their business goals.
Deceive the unwanted. Fastly’s Deception capabilities are designed to disrupt malicious automation by feeding attackers misleading signals and reducing the effectiveness of automated abuse.
The Future of Bot Management in High Tech
High-tech has always operated at the forefront of digital change, and AI-driven traffic is no exception. The challenge isn't simply that bots are growing in volume – it's that the line between beneficial automation, AI agents, and unwanted activity is becoming increasingly difficult to define.
As organizations navigate this shift, visibility and control will become just as important as protection. The goal isn't to stop automation; it's to understand it, govern it, and ensure it aligns with business objectives.
Download Fastly’s latest Threat Insights Report to explore the evolving global bot landscape and learn how they’re redefining the web.