Anthropic commits $11.6 billion to Akamai in seven-year cloud deal

Akamai Technologies said on 24 September 2026 that Anthropic had agreed to an $11.6 billion, seven-year commitment to use Akamai Cloud's infrastructure, in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. TechCrunch confirmed the announcement the next day, reporting that the contract is the largest in Akamai's history.

What the deal covers

• Anthropic will use Akamai Cloud's distributed infrastructure to support growth in CPU workloads, rather than the GPU capacity most AI infrastructure deals target, according to Akamai's filing.
• The agreement can expand by up to a further $9 billion, for a total potential commitment of about $20 billion, Akamai said.
• Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for non-voting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares — up to roughly 5% of Akamai's outstanding stock — at an exercise price of $111.33 a share; about 2% vests on the initial commitment, with the rest tied to further spending in $3 billion increments, according to the filing.
• Akamai estimates capital expenditure of about $5.5 billion tied to the commitment and is adding roughly $1.7 billion to its 2026 capital spending to secure supply-chain components including memory, the company said.
• Akamai told investors it expects $150 million to $300 million in revenue from the deal in 2027, rising to an annual pace of about $1.7 billion by the end of 2028, according to TechCrunch.
• The commitment is more than six times a $1.8 billion deal between the two companies reported by Bloomberg in May, and Akamai shares rose as much as 17% in after-hours trading, according to TechCrunch, which also reported that the arrangement is not fixed: it depends on Akamai meeting delivery and service-availability terms, and either side can end it under certain conditions.

Why it matters

The warrant structure reverses the pattern seen in other large AI infrastructure deals, where chipmakers and cloud providers have taken direct stakes in the labs buying their capacity — here it is the customer, Anthropic, that gains a potential equity stake in its supplier as its spending grows. The bet on general-purpose CPU capacity, rather than the GPUs at the centre of most AI capital spending, points to a less-publicised cost driver behind AI agents that run code and browse the web. For businesses and public institutions in the Caspian region and Türkiye that rely on Akamai's global content-delivery and edge network, the deal illustrates how quickly cloud providers are redirecting capital towards AI-linked contracts that can reshape pricing and capacity available to other customers.