Anthropic Agrees to $11.6 Billion Cloud Infrastructure Deal With Akamai

Akamai announced Thursday that it has secured an $11.6 billion, seven-year agreement with AI developer Anthropic for cloud infrastructure services. The commitment represents a significant escalation from a previous $1.8 billion deal between the two companies reported in May, exceeding the earlier figure by more than sixfold.

According to Akamai’s securities filing, the contract is conditional upon the provider meeting specific delivery and service-availability standards. Either party retains the right to terminate the agreement under certain defined circumstances.

The transaction stands as the largest in Akamai’s corporate history and extends Anthropic’s aggressive expansion of computing resources. The deal underscores a growing industry focus on central processing units (CPUs) for general-purpose tasks, such as executing code and web browsing, which have seen rising demand as AI agents assume more complex roles. Akamai did not disclose the specific applications Anthropic plans to use the infrastructure for.

Financial projections released during a Thursday investor call indicated that Akamai expects to recognize revenue from the deal beginning in the second half of 2027, with estimates ranging from $150 million to $300 million for that year. Revenue is projected to scale to an annual rate of approximately $1.7 billion by the end of 2028.

To fulfill the capacity requirements, Akamai plans to invest roughly $5.5 billion. Additionally, the company is increasing its capital expenditure for the current year by $1.7 billion to procure components, including memory, in advance.

In a structural shift from typical industry patterns, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares, representing up to 5% of Akamai’s outstanding stock at a strike price of $111.33 per share. Approximately 2% of this equity is expected to vest upon Anthropic’s initial payment, with additional vesting tied to spending milestones. For every extra $3 billion Anthropic commits, roughly another 1% of the warrant vests, potentially expanding the total deal value to $20 billion.

This arrangement marks the first time Akamai has attached a warrant to a cloud contract. The structure reverses the common trend of circular AI deals, where chipmakers and cloud providers invest directly in AI labs. Instead, the supplier is granting its customer an equity stake that grows alongside purchasing volume. A similar model was utilized by AMD in a partnership with OpenAI the previous year.

Anthropic has previously received investments from major tech giants including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in exchange for chip or cloud capacity commitments. CEO Dario Amodei noted last December that Anthropic engages in such arrangements at a lower scale than some competitors.

Following the announcement, Akamai shares surged as much as 17% in after-hours trading.