Investing.com — Akamai Technologies Inc. shares rose as much as 20% in after-hours trading on Thursday following the announcement of an $11.6 billion seven-year contract with artificial intelligence giant Anthropic.
The agreement will support Anthropic’s CPU workload requirements through Akamai Cloud’s distributed AI infrastructure and software. This deal adds to more than $2.8 billion in multi-year Cloud Infrastructure Services commitments that Akamai announced earlier this year.
Under the agreement, Akamai issued a warrant to Anthropic for the purchase of non-voting convertible Series B Preferred Stock representing 7.7 million shares of Akamai’s common stock on an as-converted basis, or up to approximately 5% of the company’s outstanding common stock, at an exercise price of $111.33 per share. About 2% of Akamai’s common stock outstanding is expected to vest in connection with the $11.6 billion commitment announced Thursday. The remaining approximately 3% would vest through the successful expansion of the commitment up to an additional $9 billion within the seven-year term of the warrant. Each additional $3 billion purchase of cloud services will result in the vesting of approximately 1% of Akamai’s common stock outstanding.
“Anthropic is advancing the AI revolution and we are thrilled they chose Akamai’s capabilities for building and operating AI infrastructure at scale,” said Dr. Tom Leighton, co-founder and CEO of Akamai.
Total capital expenditures related to the $11.6 billion commitment are estimated to be approximately $5.5 billion. The company expects no impact to its 2026 revenue guidance and an increase of approximately $1.7 billion in capital expenditures in 2026 to secure and pre-purchase critical supply chain components, including memory.
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