Akamai Technologies Inks $11.6 Billion Cloud Deal with Anthropic, Shares Surge 22%
Akamai Technologies announced an $11.6 billion cloud services agreement with Anthropic in a seven-year deal designed to provide the computing infrastructure necessary to meet Anthropic's escalating demands for training and operating artificial intelligence models.
Under the agreement, Akamai granted Anthropic the right to purchase Class B shares at $111.33 per share, equivalent to approximately 7.7 million shares of the company's common stock. This deal could grant Anthropic an equity stake of up to 5% in Akamai, cementing the AI firm's ties to the company's cloud infrastructure.
This potential stake is structured in two tranches. A stake equivalent to about 2% of Akamai's outstanding common stock is tied to the initial $11.6 billion commitment. Anthropic could earn an additional stake of up to 3% if the agreement between the two companies expands by up to an additional $9 billion.
Akamai projects its capital expenditures (CapEx) associated with the initial commitment to reach approximately $5.5 billion. The company plans to boost its CapEx in 2026 by roughly $1.7 billion to pre-secure and purchase the necessary components, including memory hardware, to support the agreement.
Akamai's stock surged by around 22% in after-hours trading following the announcement, reflecting the deal's massive significance for the company's expansion plans in AI-oriented cloud infrastructure services.
The mega-deal arrives as Anthropic continues to scale its computing capacity and secure the infrastructure resources required to develop and run increasingly sophisticated AI models, striking multi-billion-dollar agreements with compute providers and data centers. Previously, Anthropic agreed to spend $45 billion to lease AI computing capacity from Nscale at its data center campus in West Virginia.
This Anthropic deal adds to the more than $2.8 billion in multi-year cloud infrastructure agreements Akamai has already announced with customers this year, underscoring the company's aggressive expansion in long-term computing contracts.
In a separate arrangement, Akamai authorized Jabil to purchase approximately $1.7 billion in memory components under an existing services agreement between the two firms, a move explicitly aimed at supporting the infrastructure needs linked to the new deal.
Akamai stated that the agreement with Anthropic will not impact its annual revenue guidance, despite the significant surge in capital expenditures required to fulfill the associated commitments.