Akamai recently announced that Anthropic will invest $11.6 billion in Akamai's cloud infrastructure over seven years, a figure more than six times the size of the $1.8 billion cooperation agreement between the two parties reported in May.
The purchasing commitment is not absolutely rigid. According to securities filings submitted by Akamai, whether the deal materializes depends on Akamai meeting specific delivery and service availability metrics, and either party may terminate the agreement under certain conditions.
This transaction is the largest order in Akamai's history and continues Anthropic's trend of aggressively procuring computing power. The partnership also bets on a relatively under-the-radar segment of AI infrastructure: CPUs. As AI agents take on more tasks, demand for CPUs used for general computing such as running code and accessing web pages continues to rise, though Akamai did not specify how Anthropic will use this computing power.
Akamai will not recognize related revenue from this agreement this year. Company executives said on an investor call last Thursday that it will recognize $150 million to $300 million in revenue starting in the second half of 2027, and by the end of 2028, annualized revenue from this business will reach approximately $1.7 billion. To build the supporting computing resources, Akamai expects to invest approximately $5.5 billion. Meanwhile, the company's capital expenditure this year will increase by an additional $1.7 billion for advance purchases of memory and other components.
As part of the deal, Akamai issued a warrant to Anthropic: Anthropic has the right to purchase non-voting preferred stock at an agreed price, which is convertible into 7.7 million common shares, representing up to approximately 5% of Akamai's outstanding shares, with an exercise price of $111.33 per share. After Anthropic completes its first payment under the agreement, warrants corresponding to approximately 2% of equity will become exercisable. The unlocking of the remaining warrants is tied to Anthropic's subsequent purchase amounts: each additional $300 million in cloud service purchase commitments unlocks approximately 1% of equity.
As a result, the transaction size could increase by up to an additional $9 billion, bringing the total scale potentially to $20 billion. Reports indicate this is the first time Akamai has attached warrants to a cloud service contract, and this contract is also the largest order in the company's history. Such warrant arrangements reverse the circular investment model common in the AI sector: in the past, it was mostly suppliers such as chipmakers and cloud service providers that directly invested in AI labs purchasing their products. In this partnership, however, the supplier grants potential equity to the customer, with the equity scale expanding as Anthropic's purchase amounts increase. A similar structure was used when AMD partnered with OpenAI last year, linking warrants to chip procurement targets.
Anthropic is no stranger to this type of cooperation model. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and AMD have all invested or committed to invest in it while supplying chips or cloud computing power. Company CEO Dario Amodei said in an interview last December that compared with other peers in the industry, Anthropic's scale of participation in such deals is different.