Anthropic to Pay Akamai $11.6 Billion Over Seven Years in Cloud Deal
Anthropic has committed to spending $11.6 billion over seven years on Akamai’s cloud infrastructure in a new Anthropic Akamai deal, according to an announcement Akamai made Thursday, a figure more than six times larger than the $1.8 billion deal between the two companies reported back in May.
The commitment isn’t entirely locked in, however. According to Akamai’s securities filing, the full deal depends on Akamai meeting specific delivery and service-availability requirements, and either company retains the ability to end the agreement under certain defined conditions.
The Largest Deal in Akamai’s History
This agreement represents the largest Anthropic Akamai deal ever signed, and it continues Anthropic’s ongoing pattern of aggressive compute acquisition across multiple providers. Notably, the deal also represents a bet on a less hyped corner of AI infrastructure specifically: CPUs, the general-purpose chips responsible for handling tasks like running code and browsing the web. Demand for CPUs has grown steadily as AI agents increasingly take on more diverse, general computing tasks, though Akamai didn’t specify exactly what Anthropic plans to use this particular capacity for.
When Akamai Actually Expects Revenue From This Anthropic Akamai Deal
Despite the massive deal size, Akamai won’t see any revenue from the arrangement this year. During an investor call Thursday, company executives said they expect revenue between $150 million and $300 million in 2027, with that revenue starting to materialize in the second half of the year. From there, revenue is projected to reach an annual pace of roughly $1.7 billion by the end of 2028.
To actually build out the necessary capacity, Akamai expects to spend approximately $5.5 billion. The company is also adding roughly $1.7 billion to this year’s capital spending specifically to purchase components like memory in advance, getting ahead of potential supply constraints before deployment begins in earnest.
An Unusual Warrant Structure
As part of the agreement, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant, essentially the right to purchase shares at a predetermined price, covering nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares, or up to roughly 5% of Akamai’s total outstanding stock, priced at $111.33 per share.
Only about 2% of that warrant is expected to vest initially, becoming available to Anthropic once it makes its first payment under the deal. The remaining portion is directly tied to Anthropic’s future spending levels, with each additional $3 billion committed to Akamai’s cloud services unlocking roughly another 1% of the warrant. That structure means the total deal could theoretically grow by as much as $9 billion, reaching approximately $20 billion overall if Anthropic continues expanding its commitment.
This marks the first time Akamai has attached a warrant to any cloud deal, according to Bloomberg reporting, making the arrangement notable both for its unprecedented size and its unusual financial structure within Akamai’s history specifically.
A Reversal of the Typical AI Deal Pattern
The warrant structure here actually flips the more common pattern seen across circular AI deals, where suppliers, typically chipmakers and cloud providers, invest directly in the AI labs purchasing their products. In this case, the supplier is instead giving its customer a potential ownership stake that grows proportionally as Anthropic’s spending with Akamai increases over time.
AMD used a broadly similar structure with OpenAI last year, tying warrants specifically to chip-purchase milestones rather than a flat commitment. Anthropic itself is no stranger to these kinds of arrangements more broadly. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and AMD have all either invested directly or agreed to invest in Anthropic while simultaneously selling the company chips or cloud computing capacity.
However, CEO Dario Amodei told The New York Times last December that Anthropic doesn’t participate in these circular investment arrangements at the same scale as some other major players in the AI industry.
How Markets Reacted
Akamai shares rose as much as 17% in after-hours trading Thursday following the announcement, according to The Wall Street Journal, reflecting investor enthusiasm about landing the largest cloud infrastructure deal in the company’s history, even with revenue recognition still more than a year away.