AXA vs Cloudflare: Founders, CEOs and History

Company facts

Founders

CEOs and their tenures

Timeline: AXA and Cloudflare side by side

1. 1817AXA

   Founding of the Compagnie d'Assurances Mutuelles contre l'Incendie

   Jacques-Théodore le Carpentier and 17 other property owners in Rouen set up a mutual fire insurance company, the earliest predecessor of AXA. It stayed a Normandy mutual, later called Ancienne Mutuelle, for more than a century.

2. 1975AXA

   Claude Bébéar becomes chief executive

   Bébéar, recruited in 1958 by André Sahut d'Izarn, took over the Anciennes Mutuelles group in 1975 after Sahut d'Izarn's death and the settlement of a strike that had paralysed the company in April 1974.

3. 1982AXA

   Takeover of the Drouot Group

   Bébéar took control of the Drouot Group, then the leading private French insurance group, and became its chairman alongside his role at Mutuelles Unies.

4. 1985AXA

   Creation of the AXA name

   The group adopted the invented name AXA, short and pronounceable in any language, and Bébéar moved from running the insurance companies to chairing the group.

5. 1986AXA

   Acquisition of the Présence Group

   AXA bought the Présence Group in April 1986, continuing the consolidation of French insurers.

6. 1988AXA

   Merger with Compagnie du Midi

   The merger with Compagnie du Midi made AXA the second-largest French insurance group behind UAP and brought Equity and Law, then the sixth-largest life insurer in the United Kingdom. Bébéar was elected Manager of the Year the same year.

7. 1991AXA

   Control of The Equitable in the United States

   After a failed attempt to buy Farmers, AXA agreed in July 1991 to demutualise and take control of The Equitable, then the fifth-largest life insurer in the United States, which also brought Alliance Capital Management.

8. 1996AXA

   Acquisition of UAP

   AXA bought UAP, a French insurer twice its size, doubling its French business and reaching critical mass in the United Kingdom, Belgium and Germany. The merger took effect in 1997.

9. 1999AXA

   Guardian Royal Exchange and Nippon Dantai

   Guardian Royal Exchange joined AXA in early 1999, adding scale in United Kingdom property, casualty and health insurance, and AXA took control of Nippon Dantai, then the thirteenth-largest life insurer in Japan.

10. 2006AXA

    Acquisition of Winterthur

    AXA agreed to buy Winterthur from Credit Suisse for ~$14.8 billion (CHF 12.3 billion), about $8.93 billion (EUR 7.9 billion) in cash, strengthening its position in Switzerland, Germany and central and eastern Europe.

11. 2009Cloudflare

    Cloudflare Founded

    Matthew Prince, Michelle Zatlyn, and Lee Holloway founded Cloudflare, building on the Project Honey Pot spam-tracking project.

12. 2010Cloudflare

    TechCrunch Disrupt Launch

    Cloudflare launched publicly at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco in September 2010, offering free website protection and acceleration.

13. 2011AXA

    Sale of AXA Canada

    AXA sold its Canadian operations to Intact Financial Corp. for ~$1.87 billion (C$2.6 billion) as part of a portfolio review.

14. 2014Cloudflare

    Universal SSL and Project Galileo

    Cloudflare gave free SSL certificates to all customers with Universal SSL and launched Project Galileo to protect at-risk nonprofits and journalists for free.

15. 2017Cloudflare

    Cloudflare Workers Announced

    Cloudflare introduced Workers, a serverless platform built on V8 isolates that lets developers run code across its network.

16. 2018AXA

    Acquisition of XL Group

    AXA bought XL Group for $15.3 billion in cash, shifting the group toward commercial property and casualty lines and creating the AXA XL platform.

17. 2019Cloudflare

    NYSE IPO

    Cloudflare completed its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker NET in September 2019 at $15 per share, raising about $525 million.

18. 2020Cloudflare

    Cloudflare One Launched

    Cloudflare bundled its Zero Trust access, secure web gateway, and network services into Cloudflare One, its SASE platform.

19. 2022Cloudflare

    Area 1 Security and R2 General Availability

    Cloudflare acquired email security company Area 1 Security for about $162 million and made R2 zero-egress object storage generally available.

20. 2024AXA

    Launch of the Unlock the Future plan

    With its 2023 results in February 2024 AXA presented a 2024 to 2026 plan targeting underlying earnings per share growth of 6% to 8% a year, an underlying return on equity of 14% to 16% and a new capital management policy.

21. 2024Cloudflare

    Revenue Reaches $1.67 Billion

    Cloudflare reported 2024 revenue of $1.67 billion and free cash flow of $166.9 million.

22. 2025AXA

    Sale of AXA Investment Managers to BNP Paribas

    AXA completed the sale of AXA Investment Managers to BNP Paribas Cardif on July 1, 2025 for ~$5.76 billion (EUR 5.1 billion) in cash, a total transaction value of ~$6.1 billion (EUR 5.4 billion), and signed a long-term agreement for BNP Paribas to manage a lar…

23. 2025AXA

    Death of founder Claude Bébéar

    AXA announced on November 4, 2025 that Claude Bébéar, its founder and Honorary Chairman, had died at the age of 90. He ran the group from 1975 to 2000 and created the AXA name in 1985.

24. 2025Cloudflare

    Revenue Passes $2 Billion

    Cloudflare reported 2025 revenue of $2.17 billion (+29.8%) and closed its largest contract ever, averaging $42.5 million per year in ACV.

25. 2026Cloudflare

    VoidZero Acquisition and Growth Acceleration

    Cloudflare acquired VoidZero, the company behind the Vite JavaScript tooling ecosystem, in June 2026 and reported Q2 2026 revenue growth of 36%.

Acquisitions

Questions about AXA vs Cloudflare