Anthropic has committed to spend about $11.6 billion over seven years on cloud infrastructure from Akamai, making it the largest contract in Akamai’s history. The agreement significantly expands a relationship that was reportedly worth about $1.8 billion in May and will provide infrastructure for Anthropic’s growing CPU workloads.
The commitment is subject to Akamai meeting delivery and service-availability requirements, according to the company’s SEC filing. Either company can also terminate the agreement under certain conditions.
Akamai Will Spend $5.5 Billion to Build Capacity
In its official announcement, Akamai said Anthropic will use its distributed cloud infrastructure and software to support increasing demand for CPU computing. CPUs are general-purpose processors used for workloads such as running software and web-based tasks, and demand has increased as AI agents perform more types of work.
Akamai expects to spend about $5.5 billion to provide the required capacity. That includes an additional $1.7 billion in capital spending during 2026 to secure components such as memory before the infrastructure comes online.
The company does not expect the Anthropic contract to generate revenue in 2026. It expects between $150 million and $300 million in 2027, beginning in the second half of the year, before reaching an annual revenue pace of about $1.7 billion by the end of 2028.
Anthropic Can Acquire Up to 5% of Akamai
Akamai also issued Anthropic a warrant giving it the right to acquire nonvoting preferred stock convertible into about 7.7 million common shares. That could give Anthropic a stake equivalent to roughly 5% of Akamai’s outstanding common stock at an exercise price of $111.33 per share.
Shares representing about 2% of Akamai are expected to become available to Anthropic in connection with the initial $11.6 billion commitment. The remaining roughly 3% is tied to additional cloud spending, with about another 1% becoming available for every additional $3 billion Anthropic commits.
That structure allows the relationship to expand by another $9 billion, potentially increasing Anthropic’s total commitment to about $20 billion. Akamai has not previously attached a warrant to one of its cloud agreements.
Anthropic already has large computing relationships with Amazon, Google, Microsoft and AMD, several of which also involve investments in the AI company. The Akamai agreement differs because the cloud supplier is giving Anthropic the potential equity stake rather than investing directly in Anthropic.
Akamai shares rose as much as 17% in after-hours trading following the announcement.
Featured image credits: Linkedin
For more stories like it, click the +Follow button at the top of this page to follow us.