Anthropic Signs Record $11.6 Billion Cloud Pact with Akamai, Adding Equity Stake - Bokern

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Deal Overview

Anthropic will commit $11.6 billion over seven years to Akamai’s cloud infrastructure, Akamai announced Thursday. The figure dwarfs a previously reported $1.8 billion agreement disclosed by Bloomberg in May. According to Akamai’s securities filing, the commitment is conditional on Akamai meeting specific delivery and service‑availability requirements, and either party may terminate the agreement under defined circumstances. The transaction is the largest in Akamai’s history and continues Anthropic’s pattern of high compute spending, focusing on CPUs—a less‑publicized segment of AI infrastructure. Demand for general‑purpose CPUs has risen as AI agents take on more tasks, though Akamai did not specify how Anthropic will use the processors.

Financial Projections and Capital Investment

Akamai will not recognize revenue from the deal this year. Executives on Thursday’s investor call projected $150 million to $300 million in revenue for 2027, beginning in the second half, with annual revenue reaching roughly $1.7 billion by the end of 2028. To build the necessary capacity, Akamai expects to spend about $5.5 billion and will add approximately $1.7 billion to this year’s capital expenditures to purchase components such as memory in advance.

Equity Incentive Through Warrant

As part of the agreement, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares, representing up to about 5% of Akamai’s outstanding equity, at a price of $111.33 per share. Roughly 2% of the warrant is expected to vest once Anthropic makes its first payment. Each additional $3 billion Anthropic commits to Akamai’s cloud services unlocks roughly another 1% of the company, allowing the total deal value to expand by as much as $9 billion, to about $20 billion. This marks the first time Akamai has attached a warrant to a cloud contract. The structure mirrors a similar arrangement AMD used with OpenAI last year, where warrants were tied to chip‑purchase milestones.

Strategic Context and Industry Trends

The warrant reverses the more common pattern in AI deals, where suppliers—chipmakers and cloud providers—invest directly in the AI labs that buy their products. Here, the supplier gives its customer a potential stake that grows with Anthropic’s spending. Anthropic has previously secured investment or cloud commitments from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and AMD while purchasing their hardware. CEO Dario Amodei told The New York Times last December that Anthropic does not participate in these deals at the “same scale as some other players.” The focus on CPUs reflects a broader industry trend: general‑purpose processors are increasingly needed as AI agents take on more diverse tasks, even as specialized accelerators dominate headlines.