Anthropic signs $11.6 billion, seven-year cloud deal with Akamai — with an option to grow to $20 billion

Akamai Technologies and Anthropic have signed a seven-year, $11.6 billion cloud services agreement, with an option to expand the commitment by an additional $9 billion — bringing the total potential value to roughly $20 billion. Under the deal, Anthropic will use Akamai Cloud's distributed infrastructure and software to handle its growing compute workloads as demand for Claude continues to scale.

The underlying master services agreement between the two companies dates back to May 5th, but the specific project plans that form the basis of the $11.6 billion commitment were only signed on September 18th, according to an SEC filing Akamai submitted alongside the announcement. Akamai said the deal has no impact on its 2026 revenue guidance, but expects to increase capital expenditures by roughly $1.7 billion this year to secure supply chain components — including memory, which has faced broader shortages as AI infrastructure buildouts compete for the same chips. Total capital expenditure tied to the full $11.6 billion commitment is estimated at approximately $5.5 billion.

The financial structure includes an unusual equity component: Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant to purchase non-voting convertible Series B Preferred Stock, convertible into up to 7.7 million shares of Akamai common stock — about 5% of shares outstanding — at an exercise price of $111.33 per share. Roughly 2% of that stake vests on the initial $11.6 billion commitment alone; the remaining 3% vests only as Anthropic commits additional $3 billion tranches under the expanded agreement, tying Akamai's upside directly to how much cloud capacity Anthropic actually ends up buying rather than guaranteeing it upfront.

"Anthropic is advancing the AI revolution and we are thrilled they chose Akamai's capabilities for building and operating AI infrastructure at scale," said Akamai co-founder and CEO Tom Leighton in the announcement. Akamai shares jumped more than 17% in after-hours trading following the news.

The deal adds Anthropic to a growing list of AI labs locking in multi-year, multi-billion-dollar infrastructure commitments well ahead of when the compute is actually needed — a pattern that has become the AI industry's default way of signaling confidence in its own growth trajectory while giving infrastructure providers the demand certainty to justify massive capital spending. For Akamai, historically known for content delivery and edge security rather than AI-scale cloud compute, landing an anchor customer of Anthropic's size is a significant repositioning: the deal signals Akamai intends to compete directly with hyperscalers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure for AI infrastructure spending, rather than staying in its traditional CDN lane.