Anthropic Pledges $11.6 Billion to Akamai Cloud in Seven-Year Deal

Anthropic will spend $11.6 billion over seven years on Akamai Technologies' cloud infrastructure, the largest contract in Akamai's history and more than six times the size of a $1.8 billion commitment the two companies disclosed in May.

Akamai announced the deal Thursday. The agreement isn't unconditional: according to the company's securities filing, it depends on Akamai meeting specific delivery and service-availability requirements, and either side can terminate under certain conditions.

The contract extends Anthropic's aggressive compute purchasing streak and places a bet on a less-hyped corner of AI infrastructure — central processing units. Demand for CPUs, the general-purpose chips that handle tasks such as running code and browsing the web, has climbed as AI agents take on more software workflows. Akamai did not specify what Anthropic will run on the chips.

How will the deal hit Akamai's books?

Akamai won't recognize any revenue from the contract this year. On an investor call Thursday, executives guided to $150 million to $300 million in 2027, beginning in the second half, with revenue reaching an annual run rate of about $1.7 billion by the end of 2028.

To build out the capacity, Akamai expects to spend roughly $5.5 billion. The company is also adding about $1.7 billion to this year's capital expenditure plan to secure components such as memory in advance.

What's inside the warrant?

As part of the arrangement, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares — up to roughly 5% of Akamai's outstanding stock — at $111.33 per share. About 2% is expected to vest once Anthropic makes its first payment under the deal. The remainder ties to future spending.

Each extra $3 billion Anthropic commits to Akamai's cloud services unlocks approximately another 1% of the warrant. The structure could lift the total deal value by as much as $9 billion, to roughly $20 billion.

It's the first time Akamai has attached a warrant to a cloud contract, Bloomberg reported. The arrangement reverses the more common circular pattern in AI deals, in which chipmakers and cloud providers invest directly in the labs that buy their products. Here, the supplier is granting its customer a potential equity stake that scales with the customer's spend.

How does it compare to other AI compute deals?

AMD used a similar structure with OpenAI last year, tying warrants to chip-purchase milestones.

Anthropic is no stranger to such arrangements. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and AMD have all invested or agreed to invest in the company while selling it chips or cloud capacity. CEO Dario Amodei told the New York Times in December that Anthropic does not participate in these deals at the "same scale as some other players."

How did the market react?

Akamai shares jumped as much as 17% in after-hours trading Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The deal positions Akamai as a credible challenger to GPU-focused hyperscalers in AI infrastructure. With revenue ramping toward a $1.7 billion annual run rate by late 2028 and the potential for the contract to nearly double in size, Akamai's wager on CPUs — chips that have trailed graphics processors in AI headlines but remain essential for agent workflows — could reshape how investors value its edge network. For Anthropic, the structure locks in long-term capacity while keeping financial commitments partially tied to Akamai's own delivery performance, a hedge as compute scarcity persists across the industry.