Anthropic to pay Akamai $11.6 billion over seven years in cloud deal

# Anthropic to pay Akamai $11.6 billion over seven years in cloud deal | TechCrunch Source: [https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/25/anthropic-to-pay-akamai-11-6-billion-over-seven-years-in-cloud-deal/](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/25/anthropic-to-pay-akamai-11-6-billion-over-seven-years-in-cloud-deal/) Anthropic will spend $11\.6 billion over seven years on Akamai’s cloud infrastructure, Akamai[said Thursday](https://www.ir.akamai.com/news-releases/news-release-details/akamai-announces-116-billion-multi-year-agreement-anthropic)\. That’s more than six times the size of a $1\.8 billion deal between the two companies that[Bloomberg reported](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-08/anthropic-inks-1-8-billion-computing-deal-with-akamai)in May\. The commitment isn’t ironclad; according to Akamai’s[securities filing](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1086222/000119312526401048/d288154d8k.htm), it depends on Akamai meeting certain delivery and service\-availability requirements, and either company can end the agreement under certain conditions\. The deal is the largest in Akamai’s history and continues Anthropic’s[compute gobbling\-streak](https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/26/anthropic-continues-compute-gobbling-streak-in-45-billion-deal-with-nscale/)\. It also represents a bet on a less\-hyped corner of AI infrastructure: CPUs\. Demand for CPUs, the general\-purpose chips that handle work like running code and browsing the web,[has grown](https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-cpu-comeback)as AI agents take on more tasks, though Akamai didn’t say what Anthropic will use them for\. Akamai won’t see revenue from the deal this year\. On an[investor call](https://www.ir.akamai.com/events-and-presentations)Thursday, executives said they expect $150 million to $300 million in 2027, starting in the second half, with revenue reaching an annual pace of about $1\.7 billion by the end of 2028\. To build out the capacity, Akamai expects to spend about $5\.5 billion\. It is also adding about $1\.7 billion to this year’s capital spending to buy components such as memory in advance\. As part of the deal, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant, essentially the right to buy shares at a set price, for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7\.7 million common shares, or up to about 5% of the company’s outstanding stock, at $111\.33 a share\. About 2% is expected to vest, or become available to Anthropic once it makes its first payment under the deal\. The rest is tied to Anthropic spending more\. Each additional $3 billion it commits to Akamai’s cloud services unlocks roughly another 1%, so the deal could grow by as much as $9 billion, to about $20 billion in total\. It’s the first time Akamai has attached a warrant to a cloud deal, and the contract is the largest in company history,[Bloomberg reported](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-24/anthropic-strikes-12-billion-deal-with-akamai-for-ai-computing)\. The warrant flips the more common pattern in[circular AI deals](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-ai-circular-deals/), in which suppliers— chipmakers and cloud providers—invest directly in the AI labs that buy their products\. Here, the supplier is instead giving its customer a potential stake, one that grows as Anthropic’s spending with Akamai does\. AMD used a[similar](https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/07/wall-street-analysts-explain-how-amds-own-stock-will-pay-for-openais-billions-in-chip-purchases/)structure with OpenAI last year, tying warrants to chip\-purchase milestones\. Anthropic is no stranger to such arrangements\.[Amazon](https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/22/anthropic-raises-an-additional-4b-from-amazon-makes-aws-its-primary-cloud-partner/),[Google](https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/24/google-to-invest-up-to-40b-in-anthropic-in-cash-and-compute/),[Microsoft,](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/11/18/microsoft-nvidia-and-anthropic-announce-strategic-partnerships/)and[AMD](https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1292/amd-and-anthropic-announce-strategic-partnership-to-deploy-up-to-2-gigawatts-of-amd-instinct-mi450-series-gpus)have all invested or agreed to invest in the company while selling it chips or cloud capacity\. CEO Dario Amodei told the[New York Times](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEj7wAjwQIk)last December that Anthropic does not participate in these deals at the “same scale as some other players\.” Akamai shares rose as much as 17% in after\-hours trading on Thursday,[the Wall Street Journal reported](https://www.wsj.com/tech/anthropic-to-pay-akamai-technologies-11-6-billion-over-seven-years-for-cloud-services-7a55360b)\. *When you purchase through links in our articles,[we may earn a small commission](https://techcrunch.com/techcrunch-affiliate-monetization-standards/)\. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence\.* Aditya Mehta is a reporter at TechCrunch covering AI\. He’s supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism and attended UC Berkeley\. You can contact from Aditya by emailing aditya\.mehta@techcrunch\.com or via encrypted message at adymehta\.74 on Signal\. [View Bio](https://techcrunch.com/author/aditya-mehta/)