Akamai expects $5.5bn of capex to serve an $11.6bn Anthropic deal
The vendor most UK partners know for content delivery and security is building cloud capacity for Anthropic, and has issued it a warrant over up to 5% of its shares
- Potential total: about $20bn (£15.1bn) if the relationship expands in full
- Warrant: 7.7 million shares on an as-converted basis, at an exercise price of $111.33 (£84.05) a share
- Vesting: each further $3bn (£2.3bn) of cloud purchases vests about 1% of Akamai’s common stock
- Instrument: the warrant is for non-voting convertible Series B preferred stock
Akamai appears to be using one customer’s demand to justify capacity it can later sell more widely, with equity as the incentive for that customer to keep growing. For leaders courting a large anchor account, a stake that vests against spend rewards expansion rather than the initial signature. The risk is concentration: building and pre-buying supply for one customer looks sound only if that capacity can be resold should the customer’s needs shift.
Akamai said on 24 September that Anthropic had made an $11.6bn (£8.8bn) contractual commitment over seven years to Akamai Cloud, in what Akamai called a significantly expanded relationship. Akamai estimates that delivering it will take about $5.5bn (£4.2bn) of capital expenditure.
According to Akamai’s release, the capacity will support Anthropic’s CPU workloads on Akamai Cloud’s distributed infrastructure, which Akamai says spans thousands of points of presence from core to edge. The deal adds to more than $2.8bn (£2.1bn) of multi-year cloud infrastructure commitments that Akamai said it had announced earlier in 2026. The same release describes Akamai as “the cloud company that powers and protects an AI-driven world”.
The warrant ties Anthropic’s equity stake to how far the contract grows. About 2% of Akamai’s shares are expected to vest with the current commitment. The remaining 3% or so vests only if the relationship expands by up to a further $9bn (£6.8bn) within the warrant’s seven-year term.
Some of the spending comes early. Akamai expects its 2026 capex to rise by about $1.7bn (£1.3bn) so it can secure and pre-purchase supply chain components, including memory. It said it expects no impact on its 2026 revenue guidance.
Sources
- Akamai, “Akamai Announces $11.6 Billion Multi-year Agreement with Anthropic to Support Growing Demand”, press release, 24 September 2026 (investor relations copy). https://www.ir.akamai.com/news-releases/news-release-details/akamai-announces-116-billion-multi-year-agreement-anthropic
