Akamai Technologies announced on Thursday, September 24, a seven-year, $11.6 billion cloud services commitment from artificial intelligence company Anthropic. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company said its distributed infrastructure and software will support Anthropic's growing demand for central processing unit, or CPU, workloads. Akamai disclosed the arrangement in a company release and a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The agreement expands an existing relationship rather than creating a new one from scratch. According to Akamai's regulatory filing, the companies signed two new project plans on September 18 under a master services agreement dating from May. The plans cover dedicated computing capacity and related managed support. Akamai said the $11.6 billion commitment is subject to delivery and service availability requirements and contractual termination provisions.
Akamai said the relationship could expand by as much as another $9 billion, potentially bringing its total value to about $20 billion. That additional spending has not been committed. The company also issued Anthropic a warrant linked to the relationship that could represent up to about 5% of Akamai's outstanding common shares on a converted basis. A portion equal to roughly 2% is expected to vest with the initial commitment; the remaining roughly 3% depends on further commercial commitments.
The company estimates about $5.5 billion in capital spending related to the initial agreement. It expects to spend an additional $1.7 billion in 2026 to secure critical components, including memory, while saying the deal will not change its 2026 revenue guidance. An investor presentation projects service to begin in late second-quarter 2027 and the full contracted revenue run rate to arrive by the end of 2028. Those dates and amounts are company forecasts, not completed results.
Reuters reported the agreement following Akamai's announcement. The size of the commitment illustrates the resources AI developers are seeking to run expanding workloads, while placing substantial delivery and investment obligations on Akamai. The company said it had previously announced more than $2.8 billion in other multiyear cloud infrastructure commitments this year.
The next steps are the infrastructure buildout and the start of service under the new plans. Whether the relationship grows toward the roughly $20 billion potential total will depend on further agreements between the companies. Akamai's filing says the project plans each have an initial seven-year term measured from their respective service start dates.
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