Anthropic signs $11.6 billion, seven-year cloud agreement with Akamai

Anthropic has agreed to spend $11.6 billion over seven years on Akamai's cloud infrastructure, marking the largest contract in Akamai's history and signaling that AI companies' appetite for compute now extends well beyond GPUs into general-purpose chips. Akamai announced the deal Thursday, and its shares jumped as much as 17% in after-hours trading, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Timeline: From $1.8 Billion to $11.6 Billion

The origin: Bloomberg reported in May that Anthropic and Akamai had struck a $1.8 billion cloud deal. Thursday's announcement raises that commitment to $11.6 billion — more than six times the earlier figure.

The latest progress: The new agreement is not unconditional. According to Akamai's securities filing, it depends on Akamai meeting certain delivery and service-availability requirements, and either party can terminate under specified conditions.

What it unlocks financially: Akamai executives told investors on Thursday's call that the deal will produce no revenue this year. They project $150 million to $300 million in 2027, beginning in the second half, with revenue reaching an annual pace of roughly $1.7 billion by the end of 2028. To build the required capacity, Akamai expects to spend about $5.5 billion and is adding $1.7 billion to this year's capital expenditure to pre-purchase components such as memory.

A Warrant That Rewards Anthropic for Spending More

As part of the arrangement, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant — the right to buy shares at a set price — for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares, roughly 5% of the company's outstanding stock, priced at $111.33 per share. About 2% will vest once Anthropic makes its first payment. Each additional $3 billion Anthropic commits unlocks roughly another 1%, meaning the deal could expand by up to $9 billion, reaching about $20 billion in total.

This is the first time Akamai has attached a warrant to a cloud contract. Notably, it inverts the usual "circular AI deal" pattern, in which suppliers like chipmakers and cloud providers invest in the AI labs that buy from them. Here, the supplier is giving its customer a potential stake instead. AMD used a similar structure with OpenAI last year, tying warrants to chip-purchase milestones.

Why CPUs, and What It Means

The deal is also a bet on a less-hyped layer of AI infrastructure: CPUs, the general-purpose chips that handle tasks like running code and serving web traffic. Demand for them has grown as AI agents take on more operational work, though Akamai did not specify what Anthropic will use the capacity for.

Anthropic knows this territory well from the other side. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and AMD have all invested in or agreed to invest in the company while selling it chips or cloud capacity. CEO Dario Amodei told the New York Times last December that Anthropic does not engage in such deals at the "same scale as some other players."

The agreement now sits at the signing stage, with payments and capacity buildout yet to begin. The key milestones to watch: Anthropic's first payment (which triggers the warrant vesting), Akamai's ability to hit its delivery and availability requirements, and whether Anthropic's additional spending commitments push the deal toward its roughly $20 billion ceiling.

Meta description: Anthropic will spend $11.6 billion over seven years on Akamai's cloud infrastructure, the largest deal in Akamai's history, with warrants and revenue targets through 2028.

Tags: Anthropic, Akamai, cloud infrastructure, AI compute, CPUs

Featured image: Abstract technology style — layered server racks and glowing circuit patterns in cool blue tones, no people or logos.