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Akamai Signs $11.6 Billion Cloud Deal With Anthropic
Confirmed
In Short: Akamai Technologies has signed a $11.6 billion cloud-services deal with AI lab Anthropic, granting a warrant for up to a 5% stake.
Akamai Technologies has signed a groundbreaking $11.6 billion cloud-services deal with Anthropic, an AI lab, marking a significant boost for the company’s stock value. The agreement, potentially expanding to $20 billion, positions Akamai as a major compute provider for Anthropic, surpassing an earlier $1.8 billion deal.
Co-founder and CEO Tom Leighton said Anthropic chose Akamai’s capabilities for building and operating AI infrastructure at scale. Leighton noted that Akamai’s expanding global footprint and years spent serving the world’s largest enterprises put the company in a position to be “the infrastructure provider for secure and responsible AI applications and workloads.”
The agreement is built around central processing unit (CPU) workloads, where Akamai said Anthropic’s demand is accelerating. Akamai expects to spend about $5.5 billion to build out the capacity.
The warrant issued by Akamai covers nonvoting convertible Series B preferred stock that would convert into up to about 5% of Akamai’s common shares, with an exercise price of $111.33. This is the first time Akamai has attached a warrant to a cloud deal.
The deal will not change Akamai’s 2026 revenue guidance. Shares of Akamai Technologies jumped more than 20% in after-hours trading following the announcement.
The partnership underscores Akamai’s expanding influence in the cloud computing sector, reflected in the surge of its stock. The customer was Anthropic, Bloomberg reported the next day, citing a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
In addition to the Akamai deal, Anthropic has also signed a 20-year lease for about 401 megawatts at a TeraWulf Inc. data center campus in Hawesville, Ky., and a supply agreement with Micron Technology Inc. for memory and storage.
The rest of the potential $20 billion deal depends on Anthropic spending more, with each further $3 billion it commits to cloud services over the warrant’s seven-year term vesting roughly another 1%.
The agreement is not ironclad and depends on Akamai meeting certain delivery and service-availability requirements, and either company can end the agreement under certain conditions.
This development indicates Anthropic’s strategic move to diversify its infrastructure beyond Google Cloud, with Akamai offering a warrant that could grant Anthropic up to 5% of Akamai’s equity.
The partnership is expected to influence market perceptions, particularly regarding new funding rounds or strategic partnerships from Anthropic, which could further impact its valuation trajectory by the end of the year.
What this adds
The surge in Akamai’s stock value and the potential for further commitments from Anthropic highlight the growing importance of cloud infrastructure in the AI sector.
What's confirmed
- The warrant it issued covers nonvoting convertible Series B preferred stock that would convert into up to about 5% of Akamai’s common shares, with an exercise price of $111.33.
What's still developing
- Anthropic’s valuation markets are likely to see fluctuations as the effects of the Akamai deal unfold.
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- Demand for CPUs, the general-purpose chips that handle work like running code and browsing the web, has grown as AI agents take on more tasks, though Akamai didn’t say what Anthropic will use them for.