AI outfit Anthropic has signed an $11.6 billion seven-year cloud deal with Akamai as its appetite for computing capacity continues to expand.
According to Reuters the agreement is the largest contract in Akamai’s history and will give Anthropic dedicated cloud capacity for CPU-heavy workloads rather than another mountain of fashionable GPUs. The arrangement expands a previous $1.8 billion deal between the two companies and could grow further.
Akamai said Anthropic could commit another $9 billion, taking the potential value of the relationship to about $20 billion. Apparently, there is still money left somewhere after the AI industry finished buying every GPU it could find.
Akamai will provide distributed cloud infrastructure and software designed to support Anthropic’s growing demand for CPUs. While GPUs get most of the attention surrounding AI, ordinary processors remain essential for running code, orchestrating workloads, handling requests and supporting the growing army of AI agents expected to perform tasks outside the neural network itself.
The agreement could therefore represent a substantial expansion of the less glamorous CPU end of AI infrastructure. Akamai expects to spend about $5.5 billion building the infrastructure needed to fulfil the initial contract. It is increasing 2026 capital expenditure by roughly $1.7 billion to secure memory and other components ahead of deployment.
Revenue will take a little longer to arrive. Akamai expects between $150 million and $300 million from the deal during 2027, beginning during the second half of the year. Revenue is expected to reach an annualised rate of roughly $1.7 billion by the end of 2028.
The agreement contains another increasingly familiar feature of the AI infrastructure boom. Akamai has issued Anthropic a warrant allowing it to acquire non-voting preferred shares convertible into as many as 7.7 million common shares at $111.33 each. That could eventually give Anthropic roughly five per cent of Akamai.
A portion equivalent to roughly two per cent of Akamai’s outstanding shares is expected to vest in connection with the initial commitment. Further portions vest as Anthropic increases its spending. Roughly another one per cent becomes available for each additional $3 billion committed to Akamai’s cloud services, up to the potential $9 billion expansion.
The structure means Anthropic benefits financially if the cloud supplier receiving billions of dollars from Anthropic subsequently becomes more valuable. Silicon Valley has apparently discovered that circular relationships become sophisticated finance once enough zeros are involved.
Unlike several other recent AI infrastructure arrangements, however, Akamai is not investing billions directly into Anthropic before receiving some of the money back through equipment purchases.
Akamai chief executive Tom Leighton said the agreement reflected the company’s move beyond its traditional content delivery and cybersecurity businesses into large-scale distributed cloud computing.
The contract strengthens Akamai’s attempt to turn infrastructure spread across its global network into an alternative to the enormous centralised data centres operated by Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Anthropic has been collecting computing agreements at an impressive rate as it expands Claude and develops increasingly demanding AI systems.
The company has extensive infrastructure relationships with Amazon and Google and agreed to rent about $45 billion of computing capacity from British AI infrastructure outfit Nscale. The Akamai agreement was enough to excite the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street, with the company’s shares climbing as much as 22 per cent in extended trading after the deal was announced.
