Anthropic agreed to pay Akamai $11.6 billion over seven years for cloud infrastructure to run CPU workloads, an amount that could grow to about $20 billion as spending increases, according to an Akamai regulatory filing and TechCrunch.
Akamai will grant Anthropic a warrant for non-voting convertible preferred stock equal to up to 5% of Akamai's common stock, or 7.7 million shares on an as-converted basis, at an exercise price of $111.33 a share, the filing shows. Two percent vests once Anthropic makes its initial commitment, with roughly another 1% unlocking for each additional $3 billion Anthropic spends.
The deal is the largest in Akamai's history and its first structured around a warrant, TechCrunch reported. Akamai said it expects $150 million to $300 million in revenue from the arrangement starting in the second half of 2027, ramping to an annualized pace of about $1.7 billion by the end of 2028, and it plans to raise its 2026 capital spending by $1.7 billion to build the capacity.
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has said the company does not do infrastructure deals "at the same scale as some other players," a line TechCrunch tied to the smaller, equity-linked structure of this agreement compared with the chip and cloud commitments some rival labs have signed.
For founders watching the AI infrastructure buildout, this is a data point on financing style, not just size: a lab locking up compute capacity with equity instead of cash alone. Whether other labs copy Anthropic's CPU-focused, warrant-based structure is worth tracking.