Anthropic commits $11.6 billion to Akamai cloud and gets warrant for up to 5%

Anthropic has signed an 11.6-billion-dollar, seven-year agreement to use Akamai's cloud infrastructure, Akamai announced after the US market closed on Thursday, The Next Web and TechNews report. The deal can grow by a further 9 billion dollars over the same period, which would bring the total to about 20 billion dollars.

Akamai, long known for its content delivery network, will supply Anthropic with access to central processing units, according to Bloomberg as cited by The Next Web. The contract builds on a 1.8-billion-dollar agreement the two companies signed in May.

A warrant tied to spending

The most unusual part of the deal is financial. Akamai has issued Anthropic a warrant, a right to buy shares at a set price, covering 7.7 million shares on an as-converted basis, or about 5 per cent of Akamai's common stock, at an exercise price of 111.33 dollars per share. The warrant takes the form of non-voting convertible Series B preferred stock, The Next Web and TechNews explain.

• Commitment: 11.6 billion dollars of cloud services over seven years.
• Possible expansion: up to 9 billion dollars more, for a total of about 20 billion.
• Warrant: 7.7 million shares at 111.33 dollars, up to about 5 per cent of Akamai.
• Vesting: about 2 per cent with the initial commitment, then 1 per cent for each additional 3 billion dollars of services.
• Revenue: 150 to 300 million dollars from Anthropic next year, rising to an annual run rate of about 1.7 billion dollars by 2028, according to Akamai's chief executive.

About 2 per cent of Akamai's shares vest with the 11.6-billion-dollar commitment; the remaining 3 per cent vest only if the relationship expands, at a rate of 1 per cent for every additional 3 billion dollars of services. Akamai chief executive Tom Leighton told Bloomberg it is the first time the company has agreed to a warrant as part of a cloud deal with a customer. It's a serious step, but I think in this case it made sense to do, he said, adding that it helps bring the companies together.

What Akamai will spend

Akamai expects to spend about 5.5 billion dollars in capital to serve the contract and is raising its 2026 capital spending by about 1.7 billion dollars to buy supplies in advance, including memory, according to The Next Web. TechNews adds that Akamai has authorised the electronics manufacturer Jabil to buy about 1.7 billion dollars of memory components under a service agreement. According to Bloomberg, the 5.5 billion dollars is more than six times what Akamai spent on capital in all of 2025. The company said the deal does not change its 2026 revenue guidance.

Leighton told Bloomberg the contract should start in the second half of next year, and that he expects 150 to 300 million dollars in revenue from Anthropic next year, rising to an annual run rate of about 1.7 billion dollars by 2028. Akamai shares rose as much as 17 per cent in late trading, to 129.60 dollars, according to Bloomberg; TechNews reports a jump of around 20 per cent at one point after hours.

Anthropic's race for compute

The agreement adds to a run of compute deals by Anthropic, which is preparing for a stock market listing, TechNews notes. In August it signed a 10-billion-dollar deal with Volta, and The Information reported in September that Anthropic is the customer behind Rum Group's 13.7-billion-dollar compute contract, according to The Next Web. Reuters reported in August that Anthropic agreed to spend 45 billion dollars renting AI cloud capacity at Nscale's data centre campus in West Virginia, TechNews recalls. Anthropic has also signed its first data centre lease in Australia and, according to Bloomberg, secured chips from Google and SpaceX.

Despite growing concerns about the consequences of autonomous AI, infrastructure investment keeps expanding to support agentic AI workloads that need more and more computing power, Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne told TechNews; he sees the potential stake as a vote of confidence in the lasting cloud demand driven by AI. Some Wall Street investors have raised concerns about so-called circular AI deals, in which companies that buy each other's products also invest in one another, making real demand harder to measure, Bloomberg noted, as cited by The Next Web. Anthropic was not quoted in Akamai's announcement.

What this changes for companies

For Taiwanese hardware makers and electronics manufacturers, the deal is a concrete signal: Akamai is pre-buying about 1.7 billion dollars of memory and other components through a contract manufacturer to build capacity for a single AI customer. For companies buying AI services, it is a reminder that model providers are locking up computing capacity years in advance, sometimes in exchange for equity, and that cloud providers outside the largest three are becoming part of that supply. When the same parties are both customers and shareholders, buyers should read announced volumes with some caution.