Anthropic to pay Akamai $11.6 billion over seven years in cloud deal
techcrunch ·
Anthropic has agreed to spend $11.6 billion over seven years on Akamai’s cloud infrastructure, marking the largest deal in Akamai's history and more than six times the size of a previous agreement reported in May. This commitment highlights Anthropic's continued expansion of its compute resources, specifically betting on general-purpose CPUs as AI agents take on more complex tasks. The contract is not ironclad, as it depends on Akamai meeting specific delivery and service-availability requirements, with either party able to terminate under certain conditions. To support this capacity, Akamai expects to invest approximately $5.5 billion, alongside an additional $1.7 billion in capital spending for components like memory. As part of the arrangement, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant allowing it to purchase up to 5% of Akamai's stock, which could expand the total deal value to around $20 billion if Anthropic increases its spending. This structure reverses the typical trend where suppliers invest in AI labs, instead giving the customer a potential equity stake that grows with their usage. Following the announcement, Akamai's shares rose significantly in after-hours trading, reflecting investor confidence in the long-term revenue potential.
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