Anthropic's $11.6B Akamai Deal Comes With a Stake

Akamai Technologies said Thursday it signed a seven-year, $11.6 billion agreement to supply Anthropic with cloud computing capacity, with an option to expand the deal by another $9 billion. Akamai's stock jumped as much as 17% in after-hours trading. By Friday morning it had given back part of that gain but was still up more than 8% on the day, at $119.59.

The contract itself is the second act. Akamai and Anthropic signed a master services agreement in May, worth $1.8 billion. Two new project plans, both dated September 18, expanded that relationship nearly sevenfold. What makes the deal unusual isn't the size. It's what Akamai handed over to get it.

TL;DR

Akamai will supply Anthropic with cloud infrastructure for CPU workloads under an $11.6 billion, seven-year contract, expandable to $20 billion
Anthropic received warrants for up to 5% of Akamai's stock, vesting in tranches as its spending grows
The deal implies roughly $1.66 billion a year in revenue, more than five times Akamai's entire 2025 cloud infrastructure revenue of $314 million
Akamai is raising 2026 capital spending by $1.7 billion to build the capacity, ahead of collecting a cent from the contract

What Anthropic Actually Bought

The agreement covers CPU-based compute delivered through Akamai Cloud, the distributed network Akamai built over two decades for content delivery and edge security. CEO Dr. Tom Leighton called it validation of that footprint: "Our expanding global footprint, combined with our years of experience serving the world's largest enterprises, positions us to be the infrastructure provider for secure and responsible AI applications."

Dr. Tom Leighton, Akamai's co-founder and CEO Dr. Tom Leighton has run Akamai since 2013 and co-founded the company in 1998 out of MIT research on internet congestion. Source: akamai.com

According to Akamai's SEC filing, the underlying master services agreement dates to May 5. The two project plans signed September 18 pushed the cumulative commitment to $11.6 billion. Akamai says the contract won't affect 2026 revenue guidance, since spending ramps over the full seven-year term. What does hit this year's numbers is capital spending: Akamai is raising 2026 capex by roughly $1.7 billion to secure supply chain components, including memory, ahead of the workloads landing. Total capex tied to the commitment is estimated at $5.5 billion.

The Part That Isn't a Cloud Contract

Buried in the same filing is a warrant. Akamai is issuing Anthropic the right to buy non-voting convertible Series B Preferred Stock, convertible into roughly 7.7 million shares of Akamai common stock, or close to 5% of shares outstanding, at a strike price of $111.33. About 2% vests immediately against the $11.6 billion commitment already signed. The remaining 3% vests in pieces, roughly 1% for every additional $3 billion Anthropic spends over the life of the deal.

That strike price sits almost exactly at Akamai's pre-announcement close, meaning Anthropic locked in the option to buy a chunk of its own vendor at the price the vendor traded at before news of Anthropic's own contract sent the stock up double digits.

It's a structure that's become familiar this year in AI infrastructure deals: Nvidia's financing arrangements meant to guarantee OpenAI can keep paying Nvidia work on a similar logic, tying a supplier's fortunes to the customer's growth rather than a simple invoice. Here the direction is reversed. It's the supplier, Akamai, giving equity upside to the customer, effectively paying Anthropic to keep buying.

Deal Terms	Value
Base commitment	$11.6B over 7 years
Expansion option	+$9B
Total potential commitment	~$20B
Warrant size	~5% of Akamai shares (7.7M shares)
Warrant strike price	$111.33/share
Initial vesting	~2% on signing
Additional vesting	~1% per $3B spent
2026 capex increase	~$1.7B
Total capex tied to deal	~$5.5B

Who Benefits

Akamai's transformation is the more obvious story. The company built its business on content delivery, a market that has been shrinking relative to cloud spend for years. Guggenheim raised its price target to $225 from $190 after the announcement, and Piper Sandler moved its target to $158 from $125, arguing the deal's scale could shift Akamai from a value asset into a hypergrowth one. JPMorgan upgraded the stock to Neutral from Underweight. Guggenheim's note put a number on the shift: the implied annual recurring revenue is more than five times Akamai's 2025 cloud infrastructure services revenue of $314 million, and close to 40% of its total 2025 revenue of $4.2 billion.

Anthropic benefits twice. It gets guaranteed CPU capacity outside the providers it already leans on, plus a warrant struck the day before the announcement that pushed Akamai stock up double digits. Anthropic spent 2026 stacking these arrangements: a $40 billion, 5-gigawatt agreement with Google in April, a $15 billion annual compute deal with SpaceX disclosed in SpaceX's own IPO filing, and now Akamai, all while Anthropic prepares its own IPO filing. Diversified suppliers make a cleaner story for that filing than dependence on one or two hyperscalers.

Who Pays

Akamai's shareholders are underwriting the bet before it pays off. The $5.5 billion in capex committed to this contract compares to a company with a market cap of roughly $15.87 billion before Thursday's announcement. Akamai is spending on hardware today against revenue that arrives over the next seven years. If Anthropic's compute needs shift, or its access to capital tightens before its IPO closes, Akamai is left holding a data center built for one customer's workload.

The warrant carries its own cost, too. Every share Anthropic converts is a share existing Akamai holders don't own anymore. Diluting up to 5% of the company is a cheap price if the contract holds for seven years, and a much worse trade if Anthropic walks once cheaper capacity appears elsewhere.

"A contract with one customer concentrates risk as much as it concentrates revenue," one market analysis of the deal noted, adding that Akamai's own forward-looking disclosures flag the standard risks of large customer contracts: whether Anthropic can fulfill its purchase obligations, and whether Akamai can build the infrastructure on schedule.

Some analysts are already discounting the scale: Akamai's underlying business outside this contract is still projected to grow revenue around 8% annually, with earnings near $434 million, unremarkable next to the AI infrastructure optimism driving the stock this week.

Stock data as of Friday, September 25, 2026, 11:06 AM EDT.

Akamai stock price and key metrics on the morning after the Anthropic deal announcement Akamai shares opened Friday at $125.23, well above Thursday's $110.41 close, before settling to $119.59 by mid-morning, still up more than 8% on the day. Source: stockanalysis.com

The Trade Akamai Is Actually Making

Every large AI infrastructure deal this year asks the same question in a different costume: is the supplier building a business, or a dependency? Amazon's $25 billion bet on Anthropic and 5 gigawatts of Trainium capacity came with the balance sheet to absorb a bad outcome. Akamai doesn't have that cushion. A $15.87 billion company just took on $5.5 billion in capital spending and gave up a slice of its equity to guarantee one customer's business, while that customer signs similar contracts with everyone else who can supply CPUs at scale.

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