Akamai lands $11.6B cloud computing deal with Anthropic

Akamai Technologies recently entered into a US$11.6 billion cloud services agreement with AI company Anthropic, signing on September 24. This deal granted Anthropic the right to purchase a potential 5% stake in Akamai, which sent the company's shares soaring by 22% in extended trading. The long-term commitment is part of Akamai's growing list of multi-year cloud infrastructure deals, totaling over US$2.8 billion across its customer base for 2026.

Under the seven-year contract, Anthropic would be able to purchase Series B shares at US$111.33 each, converting into approximately 7.7 million shares of Akamai's common stock. The growing demand for AI-driven cloud infrastructure has led Anthropic, an IPO-bound company, to invest heavily in computing power and secure necessary resources for training and running advanced models.

Analysts believe that infrastructure investments will continue to expand in response to increasingly compute-intensive workloads. A portion of the warrant, accounting for about 2% of Akamai's common stock, is tied to Anthropic's US$11.6 billion commitment, while the remaining 3% would vest if the companies extend the agreement by an additional US$9 billion.

Akamai estimates the total capital expenditure for the initial commitment to be around US$5.5 billion, with no impact to its annual revenue forecast and an increase of approximately US$1.7 billion in 2026 capital spending to secure components needed to support the agreement. Akamai also separately authorized electronics firm Jabil to purchase about US$1.7 billion worth of memory components under an existing services agreement.