Anthropic to pay Akamai $11.6 billion over seven years in cloud deal

You can secure equity in a major AI company if you spend enough on cloud services.

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has agreed to spend $11.6 billion over seven years on cloud infrastructure from Akamai. This significant commitment is more than six times larger than a previous $1.8 billion deal between the two companies. The agreement is contingent on Akamai meeting specific service delivery and availability requirements, with provisions for termination by either party under certain conditions. This deal marks the largest in Akamai's history and signifies Anthropic's continued high demand for computing resources, with a potential focus on CPUs. Akamai anticipates generating between $150 million and $300 million in revenue in the second half of 2027, escalating to an annual pace of about $1.7 billion by late 2028. Akamai plans to invest approximately $5.5 billion to expand its capacity for this contract and an additional $1.7 billion this year for components like memory.

The inclusion of a warrant for up to 5% of Anthropic's stock, convertible at $111.33 per share, with 2% vesting upon the first payment and additional percentages unlocked by further spending, represents a novel approach in cloud infrastructure deals. This structure flips the conventional model where cloud providers or chipmakers invest directly in AI labs; here, the supplier is granting the customer a potential ownership stake that grows with their business. This move by Akamai, mirroring a similar structure previously employed by AMD with OpenAI, signals a growing trend of financial incentives being used to secure long-term, high-value customer commitments in the competitive AI compute market.

This substantial deal and warrant structure highlight Anthropic's massive compute demands and its strategy to secure these resources, potentially leveraging CPU infrastructure as AI agents become more sophisticated and require general-purpose processing. For Akamai, it positions them as a critical infrastructure provider beyond just content delivery, willing to make significant capital expenditures and offer equity-like incentives to capture a large share of the burgeoning AI market. Investors will be watching how Akamai's significant capital outlays translate into sustained profitability and how this unique warrant arrangement influences Anthropic's long-term financial partnerships and strategic flexibility.