Akamai Anthropic Deal: Surprising $11.6B Warrant and Risk

The Akamai Anthropic deal is by far the largest customer commitment Akamai Technologies has disclosed, and it comes with an unusual sweetener. On Thursday 24 September 2026, Akamai said Anthropic had committed $11.6 billion over seven years to its cloud infrastructure services, with room to add up to $9 billion more. In return for the business, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant that could give the AI lab up to about 5% of Akamai’s common stock. Akamai’s shares jumped about 20% in extended trading, according to Reuters.

The headline numbers are simple. The details, most of them in Akamai’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission rather than its press release, are more interesting. The contract is for CPU capacity, not the GPU clusters that dominate AI infrastructure news. The warrant has a real exercise price, unlike the near-free warrants AMD has granted to OpenAI and Meta. Anthropic can walk away from each part of the contract after a material outage. And to deliver, Akamai will spend about $5.5 billion, more than its entire contracted backlog was worth three months ago.

This article explains what the Akamai Anthropic deal commits each side to, how the warrant works tranche by tranche, why an AI lab is buying CPUs at this scale, and what the contract does to Akamai’s revenue, spending and risk. We covered the smaller first contract in May in our analysis of the Akamai LLM deal, when the customer was still unnamed.

Table of contents

What Akamai and Anthropic Agreed
Inside the 8-K: The Contract Behind the Akamai Anthropic Deal
How the Warrant in the Akamai Anthropic Deal Works
What the Warrant Is Worth to Anthropic
Warrants for Compute: How the Akamai Anthropic Deal Compares
Why Anthropic Is Buying CPUs Through the Akamai Anthropic Deal
What the Akamai Anthropic Deal Does to Akamai’s Numbers
How the Market Read the Akamai Anthropic Deal
Anthropic’s Compute Spree and Where the Akamai Anthropic Deal Fits
Risks in the Akamai Anthropic Deal
What the Akamai Anthropic Deal Means for Businesses
What to Watch Next in the Akamai Anthropic Deal
Frequently Asked Questions About the Akamai Anthropic Deal
References

What Akamai and Anthropic Agreed

Akamai announced the contract after the US market closed on 24 September and filed a Form 8-K the same day. Anthropic did not immediately respond to Barron’s request for comment. The terms below come from the press release and the filing.

$11.6 billion over seven years

Anthropic has committed to pay Akamai about $11.6 billion in total across two new project plans, each with an initial seven-year term starting on its own service start date. The press release says the capacity will support “Anthropic’s accelerating CPU workload demands by leveraging Akamai Cloud’s distributed AI infrastructure and software”. Averaged over seven years, the Akamai Anthropic deal is worth about $1.66 billion a year. For a company better known for content delivery and security than for cloud computing, that is a step change.

Up to $9 billion more

The Akamai Anthropic deal can expand by up to $9 billion, bringing the potential total to about $20 billion. Each additional $3 billion of cloud services, “at mutually agreed upon terms”, vests another slice of the warrant. Nothing in the Akamai Anthropic deal obliges Anthropic to buy the extra capacity. The warrant is the incentive for it to do so.

The Akamai Anthropic deal warrant in one paragraph

Akamai has issued Anthropic a warrant to buy non-voting convertible preferred stock equal to about 7.7 million Akamai common shares, at $111.33 per common share. Akamai says that is up to about 5% of its common stock. About 2% is expected to vest with the $11.6 billion commitment. The remaining 3% vests only if Anthropic expands the contract.

Term	Akamai Anthropic deal
Committed value	About $11.6 billion
Term	Seven years for each project plan, from its service start date
Workload	CPU capacity on Akamai Cloud
Possible expansion	Up to $9 billion more, about $20 billion in total
Warrant	Up to about 7.7 million common shares as converted, about 5%
Exercise price	$111.33 per common share
Capex for Akamai	About $5.5 billion, including about $1.7 billion extra in 2026
Revenue guidance	No change to Akamai’s 2026 forecast

Inside the 8-K: The Contract Behind the Akamai Anthropic Deal

The 8-K fills in what the press release leaves out. Three points stand out in the Akamai Anthropic deal: its history, the termination rights, and a clause about outages.

Two project plans under a May master agreement

On 18 September, Akamai and Anthropic, PBC signed Project Plan 2 and Project Plan 3 under an existing master services agreement dated 5 May 2026. Under that agreement, Akamai provides Anthropic with “dedicated cloud computing capacity and related managed support services”. Akamai says the master agreement is now material to the company, and it will file the full text with its quarterly report for the period ending 30 September.

The date matters for reading the Akamai Anthropic deal. On 7 May, Akamai’s first-quarter results announced that a “leading, U.S. based frontier model provider” had committed $1.8 billion over seven years. Bloomberg later identified that customer as Anthropic. The master agreement signed two days before that release fits the same relationship. If Project Plan 1 is the May commitment, Anthropic’s total contracted spend with Akamai is about $13.4 billion.

Termination rights in the Akamai Anthropic deal

Akamai may terminate the master agreement if Anthropic commits an uncured breach. Anthropic may terminate if Akamai commits a material uncured breach, or if Akamai undergoes a change of control “in favor of a direct competitor of Anthropic”. Either side can terminate on the other’s bankruptcy or similar proceedings, or if no project plan remains in effect. A breach of one project plan terminates only that plan, and the others continue as separate agreements.

Material outage as an exit

The 8-K adds that “Anthropic may terminate each Project Plan upon notice of a material outage, subject to certain conditions”. The conditions are not described. For Akamai, whose business was built on reliability, this is the clause of the Akamai Anthropic deal that turns service quality into contract risk. A serious outage could put billions of committed revenue at risk, not just a service credit.

Party	Can terminate when	Scope
Akamai	Anthropic commits an uncured breach	The master agreement, or only the breached plan
Anthropic	Akamai commits a material uncured breach	The master agreement, or only the breached plan
Anthropic	Akamai is taken over in favour of a direct competitor	The master agreement
Anthropic	A material outage occurs, subject to conditions	Each project plan
Either	The other goes bankrupt or no plan remains in effect	The master agreement

How the Warrant in the Akamai Anthropic Deal Works

The warrant is the most unusual part of the Akamai Anthropic deal, and the most misreported. The warrant agreement and the 8-K set out a structure designed to reward expansion while keeping Anthropic’s stake passive.

387,051 preferred shares, 7.7 million common

Technically, Anthropic can buy up to 387,051 shares of Akamai’s Series B Non-Voting Convertible Preferred Stock. Each preferred share converts into 20 common shares, so the warrant covers up to 7,741,020 common shares on an as-converted basis. The exercise price is $2,226.60 per preferred share. That figure is the volume-weighted average price of Akamai’s common stock over the 30 trading days before 18 September, multiplied by 20, which works out at $111.33 per common share.

Some early reports described the warrant as giving Anthropic the right to buy “Series B shares at $111.33 each”. That is the price per common-share equivalent. Each Series B share costs 20 times as much.

Four tranches: 40, 20, 20, 20

The warrant vests in four tranches. The first, 40% of the warrant shares, vests on Anthropic’s first payment under Project Plan 3. Each of the other three, 20% each, vests when Anthropic commits another $3 billion of contract value. The press release translates this into shares outstanding: about 2% vests with the current commitment and about 1% with each additional $3 billion.

Warrant vesting in the Akamai Anthropic deal (common shares as converted)

Tranche 1: first payment under Project Plan 3 40%, about 3.10 million shares

Tranche 2: first extra $3 billion committed 20%, about 1.55 million shares

Tranche 3: second extra $3 billion 20%, about 1.55 million shares

Tranche 4: third extra $3 billion 20%, about 1.55 million shares

Cash exercise, seven years

Anthropic must pay the exercise price in cash. Vested tranches can be exercised at any time until the seventh anniversary of 18 September 2026. Exercising the whole warrant would cost about $862 million: 387,051 preferred shares at $2,226.60 each. The first tranche alone would cost about $345 million.

Non-voting and hard to sell

The preferred shares carry no votes except where Delaware law requires them. They receive dividends on an as-converted basis and have a nominal liquidation preference of $0.01 a share. They can be transferred only to Anthropic and its wholly owned subsidiaries, and they convert into common stock only when transferred to someone else, subject to further limits. In short, Anthropic gets economic exposure to Akamai’s share price without a vote.

Warrant feature	What the filing says	What it means
Security	Series B Non-Voting Convertible Preferred	No say in Akamai’s governance
Size	Up to 387,051 preferred, 7,741,020 common as converted	About 5% of the common stock
Price	$2,226.60 per preferred, $111.33 per common	30-day average price before 18 September
Vesting	40% on first payment, then 20% per extra $3 billion	Most of it depends on expansion
Exercise	Cash, until September 2033	Up to about $862 million in total
Transfer	Only to Anthropic and wholly owned subsidiaries	Converts to common only on a permitted transfer

What the Warrant Is Worth to Anthropic

Because the exercise price is close to where Akamai’s stock traded before the announcement, the warrant in the Akamai Anthropic deal is worth something only if the stock rises. Akamai closed at $110.41 on 24 September, just below the $111.33 exercise price. After the announcement, Barron’s reported a premarket price of $132.05, and the stock opened at $125.41 on 25 September.

Akamai share price	Gain per common share	Value of vested 40% tranche	Value of full warrant, if all vested
$110.41, close on 24 September	None, below the exercise price	$0	$0
$125.41, open on 25 September	$14.08	About $44 million	About $109 million
$132.05, premarket on 25 September	$20.72	About $64 million	About $160 million
$150.00, illustrative	$38.67	About $120 million	About $299 million

The values are simple arithmetic: the gain per share multiplied by the shares in each tranche. They ignore time value, which would add to the warrant’s worth. Even so, they show the scale. Set against the $11.6 billion Akamai Anthropic deal, the warrant is a modest rebate. Its real function is to make Anthropic a shareholder in the supplier’s success, which gives both sides a reason to expand the relationship.

Warrants for Compute: How the Akamai Anthropic Deal Compares

Suppliers paying AI labs in equity is no longer new. AMD set the template in October 2025, and Akamai has now used a version of it. The differences say a lot about bargaining power.

AMD, OpenAI and Meta

On 6 October 2025, AMD granted OpenAI a warrant for 160,000,000 AMD shares at a purchase price of $0.01 per share, tied to OpenAI deploying AMD Instinct GPUs. In February 2026, AMD filed a warrant agreement with Meta for the same number of shares. Coverage of the deals says the tranches vest as each customer deploys up to 6 gigawatts of AMD systems and as AMD’s share price hits a series of targets, the last of them $600. AMD’s stock crossed $600 on 21 September 2026, taking its market value above $1 trillion.

A market strike price, not a penny

The Akamai Anthropic deal is different in one important way. AMD’s warrants are close to free shares: $0.01 each. Akamai’s warrant is struck at the 30-day average share price, so Anthropic gains only if Akamai’s stock goes up from here. It is a much smaller transfer of value, and a sign that Akamai did not need to give away as much to win the contract.

Feature	AMD and OpenAI	AMD and Meta	Akamai and Anthropic
Date	6 October 2025	February 2026	18 September 2026
Shares	160 million	160 million	About 7.7 million as converted
Share of company	About 10%, as reported	About 10%, as reported	About 5%
Exercise price	$0.01	Same structure as OpenAI’s	$111.33, the 30-day average
Vesting	GPU deployment up to 6GW plus share price targets	GPU deployment plus share price targets	First payment, then each extra $3 billion committed
Voting	Common stock	Common stock	Non-voting preferred

Why Anthropic Is Buying CPUs Through the Akamai Anthropic Deal

Most AI infrastructure deals are about GPUs and accelerators. The Akamai Anthropic deal is explicitly about CPUs. Neither company has explained what Anthropic will run on them, but the reasons are not hard to find.

Agents run on CPUs as well as GPUs

When an AI model works as an agent, it does more than generate text. It calls tools, runs code in sandboxes, opens web pages, reads and writes files, and waits for results. Much of that work runs on ordinary server processors, not on the accelerators that run the model itself. The same is true of the environments used to train agents with reinforcement learning, where thousands of simulated tasks need general-purpose compute.

As Claude does more agentic work, Anthropic’s CPU demand grows alongside its GPU demand, and that is the demand the Akamai Anthropic deal is built to serve. Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne told Reuters that infrastructure investment “will continue to expand to support increasingly compute-intensive agentic workloads”.

Distributed capacity is Akamai’s strength

Akamai built its business on a network spread across thousands of locations. Since buying Linode in 2022, it has turned that footprint into a cloud platform, which it describes as “a continuum of compute from core to edge”. For CPU work that benefits from being close to users or spread across regions, a distributed provider has an advantage over a single giant campus.

Lower density, easier power

CPU capacity is also easier to house. In a paper for the Brookings Institution this week, Columbia’s Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh notes that traditional CPU racks often draw 5 to 10 kilowatts, while current rack-scale AI systems can draw well above 100 kilowatts. That means CPU capacity can go into facilities that could never host a modern GPU cluster, at a time when power for data centers is the scarcest input of all.

What the Akamai Anthropic Deal Does to Akamai's Numbers

For a company with about $4.5 billion of annual revenue, the Akamai Anthropic deal changes the shape of the business. It also changes the balance sheet.

Bigger than its cloud business, and its backlog

Akamai’s second-quarter release reported cloud infrastructure services revenue of $99 million for the quarter, up 39% from a year earlier, within total revenue of $1.1 billion. Its full-year revenue guidance is $4.445 billion to $4.53 billion. The average annual value of the Akamai Anthropic deal, about $1.66 billion, is more than four times the cloud infrastructure business’s current annual run rate and about 37% of total revenue at the guidance midpoint.

Average annual value of the Akamai Anthropic deal against Akamai’s current business

Akamai 2026 revenue guidance, midpoint about $4.49 billion

Akamai Anthropic deal, average per year about $1.66 billion

Cloud infrastructure services, Q2 2026 annualised about $396 million

Guggenheim’s analysts made the same point to Barron’s using full-year figures: the contract’s annual value is more than five times Akamai’s 2025 cloud infrastructure services revenue of $314 million, and about 40% of its total 2025 revenue of $4.2 billion. Akamai’s quarterly report put its remaining performance obligations at $7.6 billion on 30 June. The new commitment alone is about 1.5 times that entire backlog.

$5.5 billion of capex, $1.7 billion this year

To deliver the Akamai Anthropic deal, Akamai expects about $5.5 billion of capital expenditure tied to the $11.6 billion commitment. It will add about $1.7 billion to its 2026 capital spending to secure and pre-purchase supply chain components, including memory. That front-loading is the price of scarcity. The company’s quarterly report already warned of “a significant increase in server and memory costs due to market dynamics driven by hyperscalers”.

Memory, Jabil and Lenovo

The same 8-K discloses two supply agreements signed in the days around the Akamai Anthropic deal. On 24 September, Akamai authorised its contract manufacturer Jabil to buy about $1.7 billion of memory components, which Jabil will hold on consignment and repurchase at cost as they are used. On 23 September, it signed a master agreement with Lenovo for hardware, software and services, with a seven-year statement of work that matches the Anthropic term.

The funding already in place

Akamai raised money for this build-out before the contract was public. In May, it sold $1.75 billion of zero-coupon convertible notes due 2030 and another $1.75 billion due 2032, and said it would use part of the proceeds “to fund the accelerated capital expenditure requirements to support its cloud infrastructure services”. Its convertible notes outstanding now total $7.64 billion. It held $4.616 billion of cash and marketable securities at 30 June.

Measure	Figure	Source
Q2 2026 revenue	$1.100 billion, up 5%	Akamai Q2 release
Q2 2026 cloud infrastructure services revenue	$99 million, up 39%	Akamai Q2 release
2026 revenue guidance	$4.445 billion to $4.53 billion	Akamai Q2 release
Remaining performance obligations, 30 June	$7.6 billion	Akamai 10-Q
Capex tied to the Anthropic commitment	About $5.5 billion	Akamai release, 24 September
Extra 2026 capex	About $1.7 billion	Akamai release, 24 September
Memory authorised through Jabil	About $1.7 billion	Akamai 8-K
Convertible notes outstanding	$7.64 billion	Akamai 10-Q

How the Market Read the Akamai Anthropic Deal

Investors reacted to the Akamai Anthropic deal fast, then more carefully, which is typical when a contract is large relative to the company.

The share move

Akamai closed at $110.41 on 24 September, before the release. Reuters reported a jump of about 20% in extended trading, and Barron’s reported a premarket price of $132.05. The stock opened at $125.41 on 25 September, about 13.6% above the prior close. On Akamai’s 144 million shares outstanding at 30 June, that opening move added roughly $2.2 billion of market value, about 20 times the value of the full warrant at the same price.

What analysts said

Guggenheim kept a buy rating and raised its price target to $225 from $190, Barron’s reported. Evercore called the contract a “landmark” and said it reinforces its view that Akamai is set for multi-year revenue reacceleration. “We’d also note the Anthropic partnership does not preclude Akamai from working with other frontier labs, which could support additional AI wins over time,” analyst Peter Levine said.

Concentration is the other side of scale

Because the Akamai Anthropic deal is worth more than the whole existing backlog, it makes Anthropic, overnight, one of Akamai’s most important customers. The benefits are obvious. So is the dependence. Akamai’s quarterly report said that no customer accounted for more than 10% of its receivables at 30 June. That will be harder to say once Anthropic’s payments start.

Anthropic's Compute Spree and Where the Akamai Anthropic Deal Fits

The Akamai Anthropic deal is small by Anthropic’s standards. It is one more line in a year of very large commitments, most of them for accelerators.

Supplier	Reported commitment	What it provides
Amazon Web Services	More than $100 billion over ten years, up to 5GW	Trainium capacity
Google and Broadcom	Multiple gigawatts of TPU capacity from 2027	TPU capacity
Microsoft Azure	$30 billion, up to 1GW	Nvidia GPU capacity
Nscale	About $45 billion	GPU capacity in West Virginia
Akamai	$11.6 billion over seven years, up to about $20 billion	Distributed CPU capacity

The Decoder, citing reports, counted $517 billion of compute deals signed by Anthropic in eleven months. Those commitments are made against projected revenue, and they are part of the wider debate about how the AI build-out is financed. Our analysis of circular financing between Nvidia and its customers looks at one side of that debate. The Akamai Anthropic deal adds a supplier-side twist: equity flowing from the vendor to the customer, rather than the other way round.

Risks in the Akamai Anthropic Deal

The Akamai Anthropic deal is good news for Akamai, but it concentrates several risks that the company did not carry before.

Execution risk in the Akamai Anthropic deal

Akamai has to buy, install and run about $5.5 billion of equipment, much of it in 2026 and 2027, while memory and server prices are rising. Revenue starts only when each project plan’s service start date arrives, so the timing of delivery decides when the money flows.

The outage clause

Anthropic’s right to terminate a project plan after a material outage is the sharpest risk in the contract. The conditions are not public. Until the master agreement is filed, investors cannot judge how severe an outage would need to be.

Dilution

If fully vested and exercised, the warrant would add about 7.7 million shares, roughly 5% of the common stock. Akamai has been buying back its own shares: it spent $410 million in the second quarter to repurchase 3 million shares at about $134.54 each. Selling shares to Anthropic at $111.33 is a different kind of transaction, but it still dilutes existing holders.

Customer health

Anthropic is preparing for an IPO and has a strong revenue trajectory, but it has also committed hundreds of billions of dollars to compute. Akamai’s contract depends on Anthropic paying for seven years. That is a credit question as well as a technology one.

What the Akamai Anthropic Deal Means for Businesses

For most businesses, the Akamai Anthropic deal is a signal about where AI capacity is heading and how it is being bought.

Distributed inference is a real option

A frontier lab choosing a distributed cloud for part of its workload suggests that not every AI workload needs a giant GPU campus. For businesses building agents or AI features, the CPU-heavy parts of the job, such as tool calls, data processing and orchestration, can often run on ordinary cloud capacity closer to users. A cloud strategy review should separate those parts from the model inference itself.

Capacity can be spoken for

When a provider signs a customer this large, capacity planning follows the big contract. Businesses on the same platform should ask how new capacity is being allocated between anchor customers and everyone else, especially in regions where supply is tight.

Contract lessons from the Akamai Anthropic deal

The 8-K shows what a sophisticated buyer negotiates: termination for material outages, protection against the supplier being bought by a competitor, and separable project plans so that one failure does not unwind everything. Smaller buyers rarely get all of that, but the list is a useful template.

Clause in the Akamai Anthropic deal	Question for your own cloud contract
Termination for a material outage	What can you do if the service fails badly, beyond credits?
Change of control to a competitor	Can you exit if your supplier is bought by a rival?
Separate project plans	Does one failed service unwind the whole agreement?
Seven-year term with expansion options	Can you add capacity on agreed terms later?
Supplier equity for expansion	Is any incentive tied to how much you commit?

What to Watch Next in the Akamai Anthropic Deal

Three filings and events will show how the Akamai Anthropic deal develops.

The third-quarter 10-Q

Akamai will file the full master services agreement with its report for the quarter ending 30 September. That document should explain the outage conditions and service levels.

The expansion tranches

Each additional $3 billion commitment vests another 1% of the warrant. Any 8-K announcing an expansion will be a clear signal that Anthropic’s CPU demand is growing faster than planned.

The first payment

The first tranche of the warrant vests on Anthropic’s first payment under Project Plan 3. When that happens, Anthropic becomes a vested holder of about 2% of Akamai on an as-converted basis.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Akamai Anthropic Deal

How big is the Akamai Anthropic deal?

Anthropic has committed about $11.6 billion over seven years to Akamai’s cloud infrastructure services, with an option to expand by up to $9 billion, for a potential total of about $20 billion.

What will Anthropic use the capacity for?

Akamai says the contract supports Anthropic’s “accelerating CPU workload demands” on Akamai Cloud’s distributed infrastructure. Neither company has named specific workloads.

What is the warrant?

A right to buy non-voting convertible preferred stock equal to about 7.7 million Akamai common shares at $111.33 each, about 5% of the company. About 2% vests with the current commitment and the rest only if the contract expands.

Does Anthropic get a vote at Akamai?

No. The preferred shares carry no voting rights except where Delaware law requires, and they can only be transferred within Anthropic’s group before converting.

How does it compare with AMD’s warrants for OpenAI and Meta?

AMD’s warrants cover 160 million shares each at $0.01 a share. Akamai’s warrant is much smaller and is struck at the market price, so Anthropic gains only if Akamai’s shares rise.