Anthropic signs record $11.6B cloud deal with Akamai, betting on CPU infrastructure

Anthropic has committed to spending $11.6 billion over seven years with Akamai Technologies for cloud computing resources, marking the largest contract in Akamai's history. Announced Thursday, the agreement dwarfs a previous $1.8 billion arrangement between the two companies that became public in May, underscoring intensifying competition for AI infrastructure capacity.

The Deal Structure#

The commitment carries conditions—Akamai must meet specified delivery and service-availability benchmarks, and either party can terminate under certain circumstances. Rather than paying upfront, Akamai expects minimal revenue this fiscal year but projects $150 million to $300 million in 2027 (beginning in the second half), scaling to roughly $1.7 billion annually by the end of 2028.

The arrangement includes an unusual equity component: Anthropic received a warrant entitling it to purchase nonvoting preferred shares convertible into roughly 7.7 million common shares (approximately 5% of Akamai's outstanding stock) at $111.33 per share. An initial 2% vests when Anthropic makes its first payment, with additional tranches unlocking for each subsequent $3 billion in spending commitments—potentially expanding the total value to $20 billion.

Infrastructure Investment#

Akamai plans to invest approximately $5.5 billion to expand capacity for the deal while also allocating an additional $1.7 billion in capital spending this year to pre-purchase components including memory systems.

A CPU-Focused Strategy#

The contract reflects growing demand for CPUs—traditional processors that handle general computing tasks like code execution and web browsing—as AI agents become increasingly autonomous and perform more diverse functions. While Akamai did not specify Anthropic's intended use cases, the emphasis on CPUs rather than specialized AI accelerators suggests a shift in how AI companies are building out their computational infrastructure.

Market Context#

The deal continues Anthropic's aggressive spending pattern on compute resources, following a $4.5 billion agreement with other infrastructure providers. It also represents an evolution in how AI companies and their suppliers structure partnerships. Rather than the more common pattern where chipmakers and cloud providers invest directly in AI labs, this arrangement inverts that model—the supplier grants equity upside tied to customer spending, creating mutual alignment. AMD employed a similar warrant-based structure with OpenAI in 2025. Anthropic has built a portfolio of these strategic arrangements, including investments from , , , and .