Artificial intelligence firm Anthropic has signed a seven-year, $11.6 billion cloud infrastructure contract with Akamai Technologies that includes warrants granting the AI developer an option to acquire up to a 5% equity stake in the cloud provider.
The multi-year agreement is structured to support Anthropic's rapidly expanding central processing unit (CPU) workload requirements by leveraging Akamai Cloud's distributed infrastructure and software. Under the terms, the collaboration may expand by up to an additional $9 billion, which would bring Anthropic's total potential commitment to approximately $20 billion over the contract term. As part of the strategic alignment, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant to purchase non-voting convertible Series B preferred stock representing about 7.7 million common shares at an exercise price of $111.33 per share.
A portion of the warrant representing approximately 2% of Akamai's common stock vests with the initial $11.6 billion commitment, while the remaining 3% vests in stages if additional capacity is purchased. To fulfill the demands of the contract, Akamai estimates total capital expenditures of roughly $5.5 billion, including a $1.7 billion increase in its 2026 capital budget to pre-purchase critical supplies like memory. Akamai expects commercial service under the contract to commence in the latter half of 2027, eventually generating an estimated annual run rate of about $1.7 billion by 2028.
Investors cheered the announcement, sending Akamai’s shares climbing more than 20% in extended trading. The landmark transaction significantly expands upon an earlier partnership between the two companies and reflects the accelerating demand for high-capacity computing infrastructure to power advanced enterprise AI applications.