Anthropic signs $11.6 billion cloud deal with Akamai

AI startup Anthropic has agreed to spend $11.6 billion over seven years on Akamai's cloud infrastructure, marking the largest contract in Akamai's history. The massive commitment, which dwarfs a previously reported $1.8 billion agreement between the companies, focuses heavily on CPUs rather than the highly sought-after GPUs. These general-purpose processors are increasingly vital for AI practitioners as they build complex AI agents that require heavy code execution and web browsing capabilities.

The agreement is contingent on Akamai meeting specific service-availability and delivery benchmarks. Akamai expects to spend $5.5 billion to build out the necessary capacity, alongside adding $1.7 billion to its capital expenditures this year to secure components like memory. While Akamai will not record revenue from the deal this year, executives project generating between $150 million and $300 million in the second half of 2027, with the annual revenue pace scaling to approximately $1.7 billion by the end of 2028.

In an unusual twist on typical AI infrastructure deals, Akamai is granting Anthropic warrants for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares at $111.33 per share, representing up to 5% of Akamai's outstanding stock. About 2% will vest with Anthropic's initial payment, while the remaining portion is tied to future spending. Every additional $3 billion Anthropic commits unlocks another 1% stake, potentially expanding the overall deal by $9 billion to a total of $20 billion.

This equity-incentive structure reverses the standard industry pattern where cloud providers invest directly in AI labs. For developers and enterprise practitioners, this massive CPU-centric deal highlights a shifting architectural focus toward agentic workflows that demand general-purpose compute alongside raw deep-learning power. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has previously noted that his firm does not participate in circular partnerships at the "same scale as some other players," yet this deal aligns them with Akamai, whose shares jumped 17% in after-hours trading following the announcement.