Anthropic to pay Akamai $11.6 billion over seven years in cloud deal

Anthropic has entered a seven‑year agreement to purchase $11.6 billion of cloud infrastructure services from Akamai, marking the largest contract in Akamai’s history. The deal, announced Thursday, ties Anthropic’s spending to a potential equity stake for the AI startup: Akamai issued a warrant for non‑voting preferred stock that could be converted into up to 7.7 million common shares, roughly 5 % of Akamai’s outstanding equity, at $111.33 per share. An initial 2 % of the warrant vests after Anthropic’s first payment, with additional portions unlocking for each $3 billion of further spend, allowing the total commitment to swell to about $20 billion if the full amount is pledged.

The arrangement reflects a strategic bet on central‑processing‑unit (CPU) capacity, a less‑publicized segment of AI hardware that is seeing heightened demand as generative agents expand their workloads. Akamai expects to invest roughly $5.5 billion to expand its infrastructure and is adding $1.7 billion to its current capital budget to secure components such as memory ahead of the rollout. Revenue from the contract will not materialize until 2027, with projections of $150 million to $300 million in the second half of that year and an annualized pace of about $1.7 billion by the end of 2028, assuming service‑availability targets are met. The agreement remains conditional; either party may terminate under specified circumstances, and Akamai’s earnings this year will not reflect the deal.

The structure flips the usual AI‑supplier model, where cloud providers and chipmakers take equity stakes in the labs they serve. Instead, Akunami grants Anthropic a potential ownership share that grows with its own spending, mirroring a similar warrant‑based approach AMD used with OpenAI. Akamai’s shares jumped as much as 17 % in after‑hours trading following the announcement, underscoring investor enthusiasm for the sizable, long‑term revenue stream and the company’s deeper foothold in the AI infrastructure market.

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