Anthropic commits $11.6 billion to Akamai’s cloud over seven years
The CPU-focused deal could grow to about $20 billion and gives Anthropic warrants for up to 5% of Akamai; Akamai shares jumped more than 20% after hours.
By Tech CEO Daily Staff, Newsroom
· 3 min read
The news
Akamai Technologies said on September 24 that Anthropic has committed $11.6 billion over seven years to its cloud infrastructure services. Anthropic can add up to $9 billion more during the term, which would take the total to roughly $20.6 billion, according to Akamai’s announcement.
The capacity is aimed at Anthropic’s CPU workloads rather than GPUs, running on Akamai’s distributed network, which spans thousands of points of presence. Akamai said Anthropic’s demand is accelerating.
Akamai estimates it will spend about $5.5 billion in capital expenditures to serve the commitment, including about $1.7 billion of additional capex in 2026 for components such as memory. The company said the deal does not change its 2026 revenue guidance.
As part of the deal, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for up to about 5% of its common stock, or 7.7 million shares on an as-converted basis, at an exercise price of $111.33. Roughly 2% vests with the current commitment, and about 1% more vests for each additional $3 billion Anthropic spends. Akamai shares rose more than 20% in after-hours trading, SiliconANGLE reported.
The numbers
- Committed spend
- $11.6B over 7 years
- Potential total with expansion
- About $20.6B
- Akamai capex tied to the deal
- About $5.5B
- Anthropic warrant
- Up to ~5% of Akamai
Why CEOs should care
AI demand is no longer only a GPU story. Agents spend much of their time running code, calling tools and browsing, which is conventional CPU work, and Anthropic is locking in years of it. For CIOs, that suggests general-purpose cloud capacity near large AI vendors could tighten, and that the cost of running agents will include more than model tokens.
For CFOs and boards, the structure matters as much as the headline. Akamai is spending about $5.5 billion up front against one customer’s commitment and is paying partly in equity. Supplier deals that mix revenue, capex and warrants concentrate risk: if AI demand or the customer’s finances wobble, the vendor carries the build-out. Similar structures are worth scrutinising in your own vendor and partner deals.
The bigger picture
Anthropic has been spreading its infrastructure bets. SiliconANGLE listed a 401-megawatt data-center lease from TeraWulf in July, a memory and storage agreement with Micron in June, and an earlier, previously undisclosed $1.8 billion Akamai commitment in May.
What's next
Watch how quickly Anthropic draws on the $9 billion expansion option, which would vest more warrants, and whether other AI labs sign similar CPU-capacity deals with edge and CDN providers.
Sources
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