Anthropic signs $11.6 billion seven-year cloud agreement with Akamai

Anthropic has agreed to spend $11.6 billion on Akamai cloud infrastructure over seven years, in what Akamai describes as the largest contract in its history. The agreement is a major expansion from the $1.8 billion arrangement reported by Bloomberg in May, although the commitment is subject to delivery and service-availability conditions.

Akamai said either party may terminate the agreement in certain circumstances. It did not disclose what Anthropic will run on the infrastructure, but the deal places a substantial cloud commitment with a provider that is emphasising CPU capacity rather than the more widely discussed AI accelerator market.

Revenue will arrive after new capacity is built

Akamai does not expect to recognise revenue from the contract this year. On its investor call, executives projected $150 million to $300 million of revenue in 2027, beginning in the second half of that year, and an annualised revenue pace of approximately $1.7 billion by the end of 2028.

Supporting the deployment will require considerable investment. Akamai expects to spend about $5.5 billion to build the capacity and is adding roughly $1.7 billion to this year’s capital expenditure to acquire components, including memory, ahead of demand.

CPUs become part of the AI infrastructure equation

The announcement points to growing demand for CPUs, the general-purpose processors used for tasks such as executing code and browsing the web, as AI agents perform more work. Akamai did not specify Anthropic’s intended workloads, so the agreement does not establish how much capacity will support inference, agents or other services.

Anthropic has already made large commitments to external infrastructure providers. Its broader spending pattern includes Anthropic’s $5 billion Amazon commitment alongside the new Akamai contract, illustrating the scale of cloud capacity being assembled for its AI operations.

A warrant links further spending to an ownership option

As part of the transaction, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for non-voting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares, representing up to roughly 5% of Akamai’s outstanding stock. The exercise price is $111.33 per share. About 2% is expected to vest after Anthropic makes its first payment, while further vesting depends on additional cloud commitments.

Each additional $3 billion Anthropic commits to Akamai cloud services unlocks roughly another 1% of the potential equity stake. That mechanism could add as much as $9 billion to the agreement, bringing total potential spending to about $20 billion. Akamai said this is its first cloud contract to include a warrant, reversing the more familiar structure in which cloud or chip suppliers invest directly in AI labs.

For businesses planning large cloud programmes, the transaction underlines the need to examine not only headline contract values but also capacity build-out, service conditions, termination provisions and any financial incentives tied to future consumption.