Akamai Signs $11.6 Billion, Seven-Year Computing Deal With Anthropic and Issues Warrant for Up to About 5% of Its Stock

A Supplier Just Gave Its Biggest Customer a Stake in Itself

Akamai Technologies spent years running the unglamorous plumbing of the internet: content-delivery networks and cybersecurity systems most people never think about. On September 24, 2026, it announced something that changed how Wall Street sees the company overnight. Anthropic, the AI lab behind the Claude models, agreed to spend $11.6 billion on Akamai's cloud computing over the next seven years ^[1][2]. Anthropic can add up to $9 billion more if it wants, which would push the total toward $20 billion ^[1][6].

Akamai calls it the largest contract in its history ^[1]. The deal builds on a smaller $1.8 billion computing agreement the two companies signed earlier in 2026, according to Bloomberg ^[4]. And it centers on CPUs, the general-purpose chips that run everyday computing tasks, rather than the GPUs that actually train AI models ^[4][19]. That distinction matters: GPUs are scarce and expensive, while CPU capacity is easier to find and often cheaper, which makes it a useful supplement for an AI company managing its computing needs across several suppliers ^[4].

But the number that made investors sit up wasn't the $11.6 billion. It was what came with it.

A Right to Buy Stock, Not an Obligation

Alongside the contract, Akamai handed Anthropic a warrant: the right, but not the requirement, to buy up to 7.7 million Akamai shares, about 5% of the whole company, at a fixed price of $111.33 each ^[1][3]. The terms are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which makes them the firmest anchor in a story otherwise driven by company marketing and analyst chatter ^[1][3].

Here's how a warrant like this actually works. Anthropic doesn't have to buy the shares. It only makes sense to if Akamai's stock price rises above $111.33, because then Anthropic can buy low and the shares are worth more than what it paid. If the stock stays below that price, the warrant is worth nothing to use. At Friday's closing price of about $119, the shares were already about $8 above that trigger point, meaning the warrant currently has real value on paper ^[1][5].

Only part of it is usable right now. About 2% of the 5% stake vests, meaning becomes exercisable, with the $11.6 billion commitment already signed. The rest unlocks only if Anthropic spends more: roughly another 1% of Akamai for every extra $3 billion it commits, up to the $9 billion expansion option ^[1][7]. Akamai frames this as "strategic alignment" — the more Anthropic spends, the more of Akamai it can own, so the two companies' interests point the same direction ^[1].

That framing cuts two ways, though. If Anthropic eventually exercises the full warrant, existing Akamai shareholders' stakes shrink by up to about 5%, since new shares would be created to cover it ^[1][14]. And a customer that holds equity in its supplier has a financial reason to keep sending it business, which is exactly the kind of arrangement that's made some investors nervous about the AI boom generally.

The Bill Comes Before the Money Does

Both sides agree on the shape of the risk, even if they disagree on how worried to be. To deliver on the contract, Akamai expects to spend about $5.5 billion on servers, memory, and data center capacity ^[1][4]. Bloomberg reports that's more than six times what Akamai spent on capital equipment in all of 2025 ^[4]. Service isn't expected to begin until the second half of 2027, according to Bloomberg ^[4][8]. So the spending starts well before the Anthropic revenue does.

Akamai left its 2026 revenue guidance unchanged when it made the announcement ^[10]. One aggregator, citing a company briefing, reported that Akamai expects only $150 million to $300 million in Anthropic-related revenue in 2027, a small fraction of the eventual contract value ^[11]. Meanwhile, JPMorgan's analysis found that Anthropic now accounts for about 93% of the $14.4 billion in new deals Akamai has signed in 2026 ^[5]. That's one customer driving almost all of a company's growth story for the year.

Akamai's older, established businesses grow slowly, and that's the backdrop that makes this deal so consequential for how investors value the company ^[12][13]. A large, multi-year contract with a fast-growing AI lab gives Akamai something it didn't have before: predictable revenue tied to one of the hottest growth stories in tech.

Wall Street's Two Stories About the Same Deal

The bullish case, made by analysts like those at Piper Sandler, is that this deal reclassifies Akamai entirely. Piper Sandler wrote that the deal's size shifts Akamai "from being a value asset to a hypergrowth one" ^[12]. Oppenheimer's analysts made a related point: the contract gives investors "visibility," meaning a clearer, contracted view of future cloud revenue instead of a hoped-for one ^[13]. Some commentary went further, suggesting the stock could double if Anthropic exercises its full $9 billion expansion option ^[14].

Akamai's CEO, Tom Leighton, cast the deal in similar terms, saying Anthropic "is advancing the AI revolution" and that Akamai was "thrilled they chose Akamai's capabilities for building and operating AI infrastructure at scale" ^[16]. The company's pitch is that its widely distributed network of data centers, built over decades for content delivery, happens to be well suited to running AI services for real users at scale, and that a top AI lab choosing Akamai proves it ^[1][19].

The more cautious view doesn't dispute the numbers. It questions what they mean. JPMorgan raised its price target on Akamai to $167 from $158, but kept a neutral rating, explicitly citing the concentration risk of having one customer make up 93% of new bookings ^[5]. If Anthropic's computing needs shift or shrink, Akamai would be left holding equipment built largely for one buyer. Other analysts and investors have raised a broader worry about "circular" AI deals across the industry, arrangements where a company's supplier and its customer end up holding stakes in each other, which critics say makes it harder to tell how much of the demand is real versus generated by the financial relationship itself ^[8][9].

The Market Couldn't Quite Decide Either

Akamai's stock told its own version of this split verdict. Shares jumped as much as 17% in after-hours trading Thursday night, then climbed as much as 16.4% during the Friday trading session, touching an intraday high of $128.46 ^[4][5][19]. By the closing bell, though, much of that gain had faded. Akamai closed Friday up about 8% ^[5][15].

Coverage of the deal split along familiar lines. Wire services and business outlets like Bloomberg and TechCrunch treated it as one more entry in Anthropic's "growing list of data center deals," with Bloomberg's headline rounding the figure up to "$12 billion" ^[4][6]. Retail-investor sites leaned harder into the premarket numbers, with one outlet's headline citing a 23% surge and asking "why it could double," a framing built on the earliest, largest move rather than where the stock actually settled ^[14]. Outlets carrying wire copy in India and Taiwan largely reprinted the Western framing without much local reshaping, though Taiwan's paper emphasized the CPU and hardware angle relevant to its chip-supply readers ^[8][9].

Anthropic itself has said little publicly beyond the joint announcement, so its own reasoning is inferred rather than stated outright. What's left, for now, is a contract that runs seven years, a warrant that pays off only if Akamai's stock keeps climbing, and a bet on both sides that spending big now is worth what it might return once the computing actually starts flowing in 2027 ^[1][8].