Anthropic Agrees to $11.6 Billion Cloud Infrastructure Deal With Akamai

Anthropic will spend $11.6 billion over seven years on Akamai's cloud infrastructure, according to an announcement made by Akamai on Thursday. This financial commitment exceeds six times the size of a previous $1.8 billion agreement between the two companies that Bloomberg reported in May.

The financial commitment is not ironclad. Securities filings show the agreement depends on Akamai meeting specific delivery and service availability requirements. Either company can also end the arrangement under certain conditions.

This arrangement is the largest contract in Akamai's history and marks a significant expansion of Anthropic's compute resources. The partnership represents a substantial investment in central processing units. Demand for CPUs has grown as AI agents take on more tasks like running code and browsing the web, though Akamai did not disclose Anthropic's specific use case.

Akamai will not generate revenue from the contract during the current year. Company executives stated during an investor call on Thursday that they expect between $150 million and $300 million in revenue for 2027, with earnings beginning in the second half. That revenue is projected to reach an annual pace of about $1.7 billion by the end of 2028.

To build the necessary capacity, Akamai plans to spend approximately $5.5 billion. The company is also adding about $1.7 billion to its capital spending for the current year to purchase components such as memory in advance.

As part of the agreement, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares. This represents up to about 5% of the company's outstanding stock at a price of $111.33 per share. Approximately 2% of the warrant is expected to vest once Anthropic makes its first payment under the deal.

The remainder of the warrant is tied to additional spending by Anthropic. Each additional $3 billion committed to Akamai cloud services unlocks roughly another 1% of the stock. This structure means the deal could grow by as much as $9 billion to reach about $20 billion in total.

This is the first time Akamai has attached a warrant to a cloud deal. Bloomberg previously reported that the contract is the largest in the company's history.

The agreement inverts the typical pattern seen in circular artificial intelligence deals where suppliers invest directly in the AI laboratories purchasing their products. In this case, the supplier provides the customer with a potential stake that increases alongside spending. AMD utilized a similar structure with OpenAI last year by tying warrants to chip purchase milestones.

Anthropic has engaged in various partnerships involving technology suppliers and investors including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and AMD. CEO Dario Amodei told The New York Times last December that Anthropic does not participate in these deals at the same scale as some other players.

Following the announcement, Akamai shares rose as much as 17% in after-hours trading on Thursday according to The Wall Street Journal.