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Anthropic commits $11.6 billion to Akamai in landmark cloud deal

Deal includes warrant structure that could expand total commitment to $20 billion

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By LineZotpaper
Published
Read Time2 min
Sources3 outlets
Anthropic has agreed to spend $11.6 billion over seven years on Akamai's cloud infrastructure, the largest contract in the content delivery company's history, Akamai announced Thursday. The deal includes an unusual warrant arrangement that could allow the AI lab to acquire up to 5% of Akamai's stock and potentially grow the total value of the agreement to around $20 billion.

The agreement, which follows a $1.8 billion deal between the two companies reported in May, continues Anthropic's aggressive expansion of computing capacity. Akamai disclosed the contract in a securities filing, noting that the commitment depends on the company meeting certain delivery and service-availability requirements. Either party can terminate the agreement under specified conditions.

Akamai executives said on an investor call Thursday that the company does not expect to see revenue from the deal this year. They forecast $150 million to $300 million in 2027, starting in the second half, with revenue reaching an annual pace of approximately $1.7 billion by the end of 2028. To build out the necessary capacity, Akamai expects to spend about $5.5 billion and is adding approximately $1.7 billion to this year's capital spending to procure components such as memory in advance.

The deal represents a bet on CPU infrastructure, which has seen increased demand as AI agents take on more tasks. However, Akamai did not specify how Anthropic plans to use the general-purpose chips.

As part of the arrangement, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant to purchase nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares — up to about 5% of Akamai's outstanding stock — at $111.33 per share. Approximately 2% is expected to vest once Anthropic makes its first payment, with additional vesting tied to spending levels. Each additional $3 billion Anthropic commits to Akamai's cloud services unlocks roughly another 1%, meaning the deal could grow by up to $9 billion to a total of about $20 billion.

This marks the first time Akamai has attached a warrant to a cloud deal. The structure reverses the more common pattern in AI infrastructure deals, where suppliers — chipmakers and cloud providers — invest directly in the AI labs that buy their products. Here, the supplier is granting its customer a potential stake that grows with spending. AMD used a similar structure with OpenAI last year, tying warrants to chip-purchase milestones.

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Analysis

Why This Matters

  • This deal highlights the enormous and growing compute costs faced by leading AI labs, with Anthropic's total reported compute commitments reportedly surpassing $500 billion in under a year.
  • The warrant structure — where the customer receives equity in the supplier — is novel for cloud deals and could become a template for future AI infrastructure agreements.
  • Akamai's pivot to CPU-based AI infrastructure signals that the demand for AI computing may extend beyond the GPUs that have dominated the market.

Background

Anthropic, an AI research and safety company, has been on a buying spree for computing power to train and run its AI models. The Akamai deal is the latest in a series of massive infrastructure commitments; earlier this year it reportedly signed a $4.5 billion deal with Nscale. CEO Dario Amodei has publicly warned that the company could face bankruptcy if its revenue forecasts prove even slightly inaccurate, underscoring the high-stakes bet on future demand for AI services.

Key Perspectives

Anthropic: Gains access to substantial CPU-based cloud capacity, with the ability to increase spending and earn additional equity in Akamai. The warrant provides a potential financial upside if Akamai's stock performs well. Akamai: Secures the largest contract in its history and a multi-year revenue pipeline, while raising capital expenditure to build out capacity. The deal also provides a path for Akamai to position itself in the AI infrastructure market beyond its traditional content delivery business. Investors and analysts: The deal's structure and size raise questions about the sustainability of AI labs' spending and the returns for cloud providers. The warrant arrangement also creates a novel alignment of incentives between supplier and customer.

What to Watch

  • Whether Anthropic exercises its full warrant to acquire 5% of Akamai's stock, which would require spending up to $20 billion total.
  • Akamai's ability to meet the delivery and service-availability requirements that the deal depends on.
  • The financial impact on Anthropic's balance sheet and whether its revenue growth can keep pace with its infrastructure spending commitments.

Sources

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Articles published under the Zotpaper byline are synthesized from multiple source publications by our AI editor and reviewed by our editorial process. Each story combines reporting from credible outlets to give readers a balanced, comprehensive view.

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