Akamai Technologies has signed a $11.6 billion, seven-year cloud services agreement with Anthropic, sending Akamai’s shares more than 20% higher in after-hours trading.
The deal will provide Anthropic with computing capacity through Akamai Cloud, supporting the AI company’s growing demand for computing power. The agreement mainly covers central processing unit (CPU) workloads and will use Akamai’s global network of thousands of points of presence.
Anthropic can expand the agreement by up to another $9 billion, potentially bringing the total value of the deal to about $20 billion.
As part of the agreement, Akamai has also issued Anthropic a warrant that could give the AI company a stake of up to 5% in Akamai. Around 2% of the potential stake is linked to the initial $11.6 billion commitment, while the remaining portion would depend on additional spending by Anthropic.
Akamai expects to spend about $5.5 billion in capital expenditures to support the initial commitment. The company also plans to increase its 2026 capital spending by about $1.7 billion to secure and purchase components, including memory, needed for the agreement.
Akamai CEO and co-founder Tom Leighton said Anthropic selected the company because of its ability to build and operate AI infrastructure at a large scale.
The two companies already had a business relationship. Earlier this year, Akamai announced a separate $1.8 billion, seven-year commitment from an unnamed AI company. The customer was later identified as Anthropic.
The latest agreement adds to more than $2.8 billion in multiyear Cloud Infrastructure Services contracts that Akamai has announced this year. Akamai reported $99 million in revenue from this business in the second quarter, up 39% from a year earlier.
Anthropic has been securing large amounts of computing and data-center capacity from multiple providers as it expands its AI models. The company has also signed major agreements covering data centers, cloud computing, memory and storage.
The Akamai deal highlights the growing demand for AI infrastructure as companies invest heavily in the computing capacity needed to develop and operate increasingly advanced AI systems.
