Akamai Technologies announced on September 24, 2026, a seven-year, $11.6 billion contractual commitment with Anthropic. This agreement focuses on providing Akamai's cloud infrastructure and software to support Anthropic's increasing demand for CPU computing capacity. The deal also includes an option for Anthropic to expand its commitment by an additional $9 billion, potentially bringing the total value to approximately $20 billion.
As part of the agreement, Akamai has issued a warrant to Anthropic, allowing it to purchase non-voting convertible Series B Preferred Stock. This stock represents up to 7.7 million shares of Akamai's common stock on an as-converted basis, or approximately 5% of its outstanding common stock. A portion of the warrant, representing about 2% of Akamai's common stock, is expected to vest with the initial $11.6 billion commitment. The remaining 3% would vest incrementally as Anthropic commits to additional cloud services, with each $3 billion in purchases triggering the vesting of approximately 1% of Akamai's common stock. The exercise price for these shares is set at $111.33 per share.
Akamai expects to incur approximately $5.5 billion in capital expenditures to build the necessary capacity for this commitment. The company also anticipates increasing its 2026 capital expenditures by about $1.7 billion to secure and pre-purchase critical supply chain components, including memory. Akamai does not foresee any impact on its 2026 revenue guidance from this deal. Revenue from the contract is projected to begin in the second half of 2027, with an estimated $150 million to $300 million for that year, and is expected to reach an annual run rate of approximately $1.7 billion by the end of 2028.
This expanded agreement follows a previous $1.8 billion, seven-year commitment between Akamai and Anthropic, which was disclosed in May. Tom Leighton, co-founder and CEO of Akamai, noted that this is the first time Akamai has included such a warrant in a cloud deal with a customer, describing it as a "serious step" to align the companies. The deal underscores a broader industry trend of increasing CPU demands for AI agent workloads, such as tool calls and web searches, in addition to the GPU needs for AI model training.