Akamai signs $11.6 billion cloud deal with Anthropic, grants warrant for up to 5% stake

Akamai Technologies Inc. shares surged more than 20% in after-hours trading following the revelation of a $11.6 billion, seven-year deal to supply computing capacity to AI developer Anthropic PBC. The agreement focuses on central processing unit workloads, with Anthropic's demand accelerating. Akamai Cloud will provide the capacity through a vast distributed network of thousands of points of presence.

The agreement allows Anthropic to commit up to $9 billion more, potentially totaling around $20 billion. Additionally, Akamai may grant Anthropic a small equity stake through a warrant issuing nonvoting convertible Series B preferred stock, with an exercise price of $111.33. Roughly 2% of this vested immediately, with the remainder dependent on further spending.

The cloud and content delivery network company affirmed that the deal won't alter its 2026 revenue guidance. Capital spending tied to the $11.6 billion commitment is estimated at $5.5 billion. Akamai is also increasing its 2026 capital expenditures by about $1.7 billion to secure supply chain components, including memory. Co-founder and CEO Tom Leighton attributed Anthropic's choice of Akamai to the company's capabilities for building and operating AI infrastructure at scale.

The two companies had previously worked together, with Akamai's commitment of $1.8 billion to a frontier model company in May driving the stock up more than 26%.