Anthropic commits $11.6B over seven years to Akamai Cloud and gets warrants for up to 5% of Akamai
On Sept 24, 2026 Akamai announced an $11.6B, seven-year agreement for Anthropic to use Akamai Cloud's distributed AI infrastructure, expandable by up to $9B more (about $20B total). Akamai issued Anthropic warrants for up to ~5% of its stock at $111.33 a share, its first cloud deal with a warrant and the largest contract in its history; its shares jumped about 17–22% after hours.
Key facts
- Value: $11.6B over 7 years, expandable by up to $9B to ~$20B
- Workloads: CPU workloads on Akamai Cloud's distributed AI infrastructure and software (Akamai)
- Warrants: up to ~5% of Akamai common stock at $111.33/share; ~2% vests with the initial commitment, ~1% per additional $3B of services, up to $9B
- Akamai expects ~$5.5B of related capex, including ~$1.7B extra in 2026; no change to 2026 revenue guidance
- Largest contract in Akamai's history and its first cloud deal with a warrant (Reuters)
- Tom Leighton (Akamai CEO): 'Anthropic is advancing the AI revolution and we are thrilled they chose Akamai's capabilities for building and operating AI infrastructure at scale'
What happened
Anthropic signed a long-term compute contract with the CDN and edge-cloud company Akamai, joining a series of large Anthropic capacity deals (including Nscale, whose S-1 showed Microsoft and Anthropic accounting for most of its contract value). The warrant structure ties Anthropic's potential equity in Akamai to how much it ends up spending.
Why it matters
It shows AI labs spreading compute across non-hyperscaler providers, and suppliers paying for anchor customers with equity, days before Anthropic's IPO prospectus became public.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created (sweep 2026-09-29)
Related events
- Reuters obtains Anthropic's IPO prospectus: $2T+ target valuation, $4.6B 2025 revenue, 80 pages of risk factors incl. existential risk ★★★★
- Nscale raises $3.36B in convertible notes ahead of a planned ~$35B NYSE IPO ★★★
Sources (3)
- officialAkamai: $11.6 billion multi-year agreement with Anthropic
- pressReuters: Akamai, Anthropic sign $11.6 billion cloud services deal
- pressTechCrunch: Anthropic to pay Akamai $11.6 billion over seven years
id: 2026-09-24-anthropic-akamai-11-6b-cloud-deal · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline