Anthropic signs $11.6 billion Akamai cloud deal

Anthropic will spend $11.6 billion over seven years on Akamai’s cloud infrastructure, Akamai announced on Thursday. According to TechCrunch, this commitment is more than six times the size of a previous $1.8 billion deal reported by Bloomberg in May. The agreement is not unconditional; Akamai’s securities filing notes it depends on meeting specific delivery and service-availability requirements, and either party can terminate the contract under certain conditions.

The details

The deal is the largest in Akamai’s history and represents a strategic bet on CPUs rather than the more hyped GPU market. As TechCrunch notes, demand for general-purpose chips has grown as AI agents take on more tasks, though Akamai did not specify exactly how Anthropic will utilize this capacity. Akamai expects to spend approximately $5.5 billion to build out the necessary capacity and is adding $1.7 billion to its current year’s capital spending to purchase components like memory in advance.

Financially, Akamai will not recognize revenue from this deal in 2026. Executives stated on an investor call that they expect $150 million to $300 million in revenue in 2027, starting in the second half of the year, with the annual pace reaching about $1.7 billion by the end of 2028. In a structural first for the company, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares, or up to about 5% of outstanding stock, at $111.33 a share. About 2% of this stake vests upon Anthropic’s first payment, while the remainder is tied to additional spending commitments. Each additional $3 billion Anthropic commits unlocks roughly another 1% of the stock, potentially growing the total deal value to about $20 billion.

Context

This arrangement flips the common pattern in circular AI deals, where suppliers like chipmakers or cloud providers invest directly in AI labs. Here, the supplier is giving its customer a potential stake that grows as the customer spends more. TechCrunch points out that AMD used a similar structure with OpenAI last year, tying warrants to chip-purchase milestones. Anthropic is already involved in such arrangements, with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and AMD having invested in the company while selling it chips or cloud capacity. CEO Dario Amodei told The New York Times in December that Anthropic does not participate in these deals at the “same scale as some other players,” yet this $11.6 billion commitment underscores the company’s aggressive compute expansion.

What it means for developers

For developers, this deal signals a continued reliance on CPU-heavy workloads for AI agents. As AI systems move beyond simple inference to executing complex, multi-step tasks, the need for general-purpose processing power increases. This may result in more robust infrastructure for running code and handling web interactions, which are core components of agentic workflows. However, because the specific use cases are not disclosed, developers should monitor for new API features or infrastructure updates from Anthropic that leverage this CPU capacity. The warrant structure also suggests that Anthropic is deeply committed to long-term infrastructure stability, which could translate to more consistent performance and availability for enterprise users.

What to watch

• Revenue recognition: Track Akamai’s quarterly reports to see if the $150 million to $300 million revenue target for 2027 is met, which would confirm the deal’s operational progress.
• Warrant vesting: Monitor Anthropic’s additional spending commitments, as each $3 billion increment unlocks more equity for Anthropic, potentially altering the company’s ownership structure.
• CPU utilization: Watch for announcements from Anthropic regarding new agentic features or tools that specifically highlight CPU-based processing, which would validate the strategic bet on general-purpose chips.
• Market reaction: Observe how Akamai’s stock performs in the coming months, as the 17% after-hours jump on Thursday indicates strong investor confidence, but sustained growth will depend on the deal’s execution.