Anthropic has committed $11.6 billion to Akamai Technologies for cloud computing over seven years and received a warrant that could ultimately give it roughly 5% of Akamai, tying one of the AI industry’s largest infrastructure contracts directly to the supplier’s equity.
The warrant carries a common-share-equivalent exercise price of $111.33. Akamai closed Thursday at $110.41, down 6.78%, before announcing the transaction after the U.S. market closed.
By 1:14 p.m. ET on Friday, Akamai shares were trading at $115.41, up 4.53%, after reaching $128.46 earlier in the session. At that price, the warrant’s $111.33 strike was already in the money on a common-stock-equivalent basis.
There is an important detail behind that comparison. The strike was not set from Thursday’s closing price. Akamai’s Form 8-K says the warrant was actually issued on September 18 and its exercise price was calculated from the stock’s volume-weighted average price over the preceding 30 trading days. The fact that the resulting $111.33 strike landed only $0.92 above Thursday’s pre-announcement close is therefore coincidence rather than the pricing mechanism.
Anthropic Can Earn Up to About 5% of Akamai
The equity component is split according to how much business Anthropic ultimately gives Akamai.
The warrant covers non-voting convertible Series B preferred stock equivalent to approximately 7.7 million Akamai common shares, or around 5% of common stock outstanding on an as-converted basis.
A portion representing roughly 2% of Akamai’s common stock is expected to vest in connection with the initial $11.6 billion commitment.
The remaining approximately 3% is tied to expansion of the relationship. Each additional $3 billion of cloud-service purchases on mutually agreed terms would vest roughly another 1% of Akamai’s common stock, up to $9 billion of additional commitments.
That takes the potential commercial relationship to approximately $20 billion over seven years.
The structure is significant because Anthropic is not simply buying compute. Akamai is effectively giving one of its largest customers a direct economic interest in the upside created if the contract materially changes the scale of its cloud business.
The $11.6 Billion Is for CPU Workloads, Not GPUs
The agreement also differs from many of the giant AI infrastructure contracts investors have become accustomed to seeing.
Anthropic will use Akamai’s distributed cloud infrastructure and software for growing
CPU workloads, rather than securing another block of Nvidia-style GPU capacity.
Akamai Chief Executive Dr. Tom Leighton said, “Anthropic is advancing the AI revolution and we are thrilled they chose Akamai’s capabilities for building and operating AI infrastructure at scale.”
The deal expands an increasingly diversified compute stack at Anthropic. FinanceFeeds reported in July that Anthropic was exploring a Samsung partnership for its first custom AI chip, while maintaining access to infrastructure and processors from multiple suppliers.
Akamai Will Spend About $5.5 Billion to Fulfil the Contract
The revenue commitment comes with a large upfront infrastructure bill.
Akamai estimates approximately $5.5 billion of total capital expenditure will be required to support the initial $11.6 billion contract.
About $1.7 billion of additional capex is expected in 2026 alone as the company secures and prepurchases critical supply-chain components, including memory. Akamai said the deal does not change its 2026 revenue guidance because meaningful service revenue is expected to begin later.
The company’s presentation shows approximately $3.1 billion of additional capex in 2027 and another $700 million in 2028. Revenue is expected to begin with roughly $150 million to $300 million in 2027, ramp through 2028 and reach a contracted run rate of about $1.7 billion a year by the end of 2028.
The memory line is particularly relevant after a year in which AI demand has tightened capacity across DRAM and HBM. FinanceFeeds reported this week that Samsung plans to increase HBM wafer input to roughly 250,000 wafers a month in 2027, while Micron’s September 30 earnings are set to provide another read on whether AI demand can keep absorbing new supply.
AI Compute Contracts Are Starting to Carry Equity
The warrant is what turns the Akamai transaction from a conventional cloud-services contract into something more unusual.
Anthropic commits billions of dollars of future demand. Akamai commits billions of dollars of capital to build the infrastructure. And Anthropic receives the right to participate directly in Akamai’s equity upside if the relationship reaches its planned scale.
That matters at a time when the market is questioning whether enormous AI capital commitments can generate sufficient returns. FinanceFeeds examined that tension earlier this month in its analysis of the roughly $700 billion AI capex trade.
For Akamai shareholders, the trade-off is now unusually visible. The Anthropic contract could add roughly $20 billion of commitments at maximum expansion, but getting there requires substantial capital spending and potentially around 5% of the company being issued to the customer through the warrant.
For Anthropic, the economics work in the opposite direction: it secures long-duration compute capacity while holding an option on the company being paid to build it.
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