Akamai announced on Sept. 24 that Anthropic has committed $11.6 billion over seven years to use Akamai Cloud's distributed infrastructure and software for growing CPU workloads. The company described this as an expanded relationship, not a completed $20 billion deal.
Akamai said the agreement could grow by up to another $9 billion, making the total potential commitment approximately $20 billion. That expansion is conditional, not guaranteed. The company also issued Anthropic a warrant to buy non-voting convertible preferred stock representing up to about 5% of Akamai's common stock on an as-converted basis. Roughly 2% is expected to vest with the announced $11.6 billion commitment; the remaining roughly 3% depends on expansion of the agreement.
The company estimates capital spending of about $5.5 billion associated with the announced commitment. It expects no change to its 2026 revenue guidance and approximately $1.7 billion more capital expenditure in 2026 to secure supply-chain components, including memory.
The deal is a sign of demand for infrastructure that supports AI workloads beyond model training. Akamai specifically named distributed CPU workloads. It did not quantify the fraction of Anthropic's total compute that would shift away from GPUs, provide measured performance gains, or claim that this contract would change consumer prices. Those outcomes remain unproven.