Anthropic has committed to $11.6 billion in cloud services from Akamai over seven years, marking the largest deal in Akamai's history.
Key facts
- •The $11.6 billion contract spans seven years and is the largest in Akamai's history.
- •Anthropic receives warrants for up to 5% of Akamai stock, with vesting tied to spending milestones.
- •Akamai expects to invest $5.5 billion in capacity and an additional $1.7 billion in hardware components.
- •The deal is contingent on Akamai meeting specific delivery and service-availability requirements.
- •Anthropic has reportedly committed to $517 billion in compute capacity deals over the last 11 months.
Anthropic has entered into a seven-year, $11.6 billion agreement for cloud infrastructure services from Akamai Technologies. The deal, which is the largest in Akamai's history, includes a warrant allowing Anthropic to acquire up to 5% of Akamai's stock based on spending milestones. While the contract is significant, it is contingent on Akamai meeting specific service-availability and delivery requirements, and both companies retain the right to terminate the agreement under certain conditions.
By the numbers
Financial Terms and Equity Warrants
The agreement includes a warrant for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares, representing approximately 5% of Akamai's outstanding stock at a price of $111.33 per share. Initial vesting of 2% is expected upon the first payment, with the remaining 3% tied to additional spending increments of $3 billion, potentially increasing the total deal value by $9 billion. Akamai does not expect revenue from this contract in the current year, projecting $150 million to $300 million in 2027, with an annual pace of $1.7 billion by the end of 2028.
Infrastructure and Capital Investment
To support the increased capacity, Akamai plans to spend approximately $5.5 billion. The company is also increasing its capital expenditure by $1.7 billion this year to secure components such as memory. The deal focuses on CPU infrastructure, which Akamai noted is increasingly utilized by AI agents for tasks like running code and browsing the web.
Industry Context and Spending Concerns
The deal follows a period of heavy compute investment by Anthropic, which has reportedly closed compute deals totaling $517 billion over the past 11 months, including a $45 billion commitment to Nscale last month. These spending levels have drawn attention to the sustainability of AI infrastructure investments. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei previously warned in December 2025 that the company could face bankruptcy if revenue forecasts used to justify these compute commitments prove inaccurate.
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This article was independently rewritten by ManyPress editorial AI from reporting originally published by TechCrunch, The Decoder.
