Akamai announced a seven-year, $11.6 billion cloud infrastructure agreement with Anthropic on September 25 — the largest contract in the company's history and more than six times the size of a $1.8 billion deal reported in May. The agreement could grow to roughly $20 billion if Anthropic keeps expanding its commitments, and covers general-purpose CPU capacity rather than specialized AI chips, reflecting rising demand for the compute that runs AI agents.
As part of the deal, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into about 7.7 million shares, up to 5% of Akamai's outstanding stock, at $111.33 a share. Roughly 2% vests once Anthropic makes its first payment, with more unlocking for every additional $3 billion in spending. Akamai plans about $5.5 billion in capital spending to build the capacity, expects no revenue from the deal in 2026, $150-300 million in 2027, and around $1.7 billion annually by the end of 2028. Akamai shares jumped as much as 17% in after-hours trading on the news.
The agreement underscores how AI labs are locking in massive, multi-year infrastructure commitments — often paired with equity stakes for the supplier — to secure compute capacity as demand from AI agents and models keeps accelerating.