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Anthropic will spend $11.6 billion over seven years on Akamai\u2019s cloud infrastructure, Akamai said Thursday<\/a>. That\u2019s more than six times the size of a $1.8 billion deal between the two companies that Bloomberg reported<\/a> in May. The commitment isn\u2019t ironclad; according to Akamai\u2019s securities filing<\/a>, it depends on Akamai meeting certain delivery and service-availability requirements, and either company can end the agreement under certain conditions.<\/p>\n The deal is the largest in Akamai\u2019s history and continues Anthropic\u2019s compute gobbling-streak<\/a>. It also represents a bet on a less-hyped corner of AI infrastructure: CPUs.\u00a0 Demand for CPUs, the general-purpose chips that handle work like running code and browsing the web, has grown<\/a> as AI agents take on more tasks, though Akamai didn\u2019t say what Anthropic will use them for.\u00a0<\/p>\n Akamai won\u2019t see revenue from the deal this year. On an investor call<\/a> Thursday, executives said they expect $150 million to $300 million in 2027, starting in the second half, with revenue reaching an annual pace of about $1.7 billion by the end of 2028.\u00a0<\/p>\n To build out the capacity, Akamai expects to spend about $5.5 billion. It is also adding about $1.7 billion to this year\u2019s capital spending to buy components such as memory in advance.\u00a0<\/p>\n As part of the deal, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant, essentially the right to buy shares at a set price, for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares, or up to about 5% of the company\u2019s outstanding stock, at $111.33 a share. About 2% is expected to vest, or become available to Anthropic once it makes its first payment under the deal. The rest is tied to Anthropic spending more. Each additional $3 billion it commits to Akamai\u2019s cloud services unlocks roughly another 1%, so the deal could grow by as much as $9 billion, to about $20 billion in total.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the first time Akamai has attached a warrant to a cloud deal, and the contract is the largest in company history, Bloomberg reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n The warrant flips the more common pattern in circular AI deals<\/a>, in which suppliers\u2014 chipmakers and cloud providers\u2014invest directly in the AI labs that buy their products. Here, the supplier is instead giving its customer a potential stake, one that grows as Anthropic\u2019s spending with Akamai does. AMD used a similar<\/a> structure with OpenAI last year, tying warrants to chip-purchase milestones.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anthropic is no stranger to such arrangements. Amazon<\/a>, Google<\/a>, Microsoft, <\/a>and AMD<\/a> have all invested or agreed to invest in the company while selling it chips or cloud capacity. CEO Dario Amodei told the New York Times<\/a> last December that Anthropic does not participate in these deals at the \u201csame scale as some other players.\u201d<\/p>\n Akamai shares rose as much as 17% in after-hours trading on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n