Anthropic to pay Akamai $11.6 billion over seven years in cloud deal — SkimNews
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- Anthropic will spend $11.6 billion over seven years on Akamai's cloud infrastructure — the largest deal in Akamai's history — more than six times the size of a prior $1.8 billion arrangement Bloomberg reported in May.
- Akamai won't see revenue this year; executives told investors they expect $150-300 million in 2027 (starting H2), reaching an annual pace of ~$1.7 billion by end of 2028, and plans to spend ~$5.5 billion building capacity plus ~$1.7 billion on this year's capex.
- Anthropic received warrants for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into up to 7.7 million shares (~5% of Akamai outstanding) at $111.33/share, with ~2% vesting on first payment; each additional $3 billion in spending unlocks another ~1%, potentially growing the deal to ~$20 billion.
- The warrant structure flips the usual AI-deal pattern — where suppliers invest in labs — by giving the customer a growing equity stake; AMD used a similar structure with OpenAI last year, the article notes.
- Akamai shares rose as much as 17% in after-hours trading Thursday, per the Wall Street Journal.
Why it matters: Akamai is fronting roughly $5.5 billion in capital costs and won't see revenue until H2 2027, yet shareholders bid the stock up 17% after-hours on the announcement. By handing Anthropic warrants tied to future spend, Akamai is signaling confidence that the AI lab's compute appetite will keep scaling — and positioning itself as the rare supplier getting paid in equity upside rather than giving it.
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