Akamai Technologies, the content-delivery and security company, said on September 24, 2026 that Anthropic had committed $11.6 billion over seven years to Akamai Cloud, to meet what the release called Anthropic's "accelerating CPU workload demands" globenewswire.com. Akamai estimated the capital expenditure tied to that commitment at about $5.5 billion. It raised 2026 capex by about $1.7 billion to pre-purchase supply-chain components including memory, and said the deal would not change its 2026 revenue guidance globenewswire.com.
Spread evenly, the commitment averages about $1.66 billion a year. That is 38% of the $4.323 billion trailing twelve-month revenue CNBC lists for Akamai cnbc.com. The release counts the deal against Cloud Infrastructure Services (CIS), a segment SiliconANGLE reported produced $99 million of revenue in the second quarter, up 39% siliconangle.com. Annualised, that is about $396 million, so the contract's average yearly value is roughly four times the segment's current size. The two companies were already working together. CNBC reported Akamai's stock rose 20% on May 8 after a $1.8 billion, seven-year commitment from an unnamed "leading frontier model provider" cnbc.com. Bloomberg reported the customer was Anthropic, SiliconANGLE said siliconangle.com.
Akamai is buying hardware before Anthropic's revenue arrives
Quartz, in a report carried by Yahoo Finance, described the sequence using an SEC filing. The master services agreement dates to May 5, 2026, and the two project plans behind the new commitment were signed on September 18. A Lenovo hardware supply agreement followed on September 23, and on September 24 contract manufacturer Jabil was authorised to buy about $1.7 billion of memory components finance.yahoo.com. The Jabil authorisation matches the 2026 capex increase in amount, and it was granted the same day as the announcement.
Revenue comes later. Dealroom, a startup-data company, reported that Morgan Stanley based its model on a management forecast that the deal could add $150 million to $300 million in 2027. On that basis the bank lifted its Akamai revenue growth estimate from 12.5% to about 16%, against 5% reported growth in 2025 dealroom.co. Set against the $5.5 billion build, even the top of that range is under 6% of the capital committed.
Dealroom also relayed Oppenheimer's build arithmetic: about 77 megawatts, at an average of $22 million of annual revenue and roughly $70 million of build cost per megawatt dealroom.co. Multiplied out, 77 megawatts at $70 million each is about $5.4 billion, consistent with Akamai's estimate. Our read is that each capex dollar returns about 31 cents of revenue a year, before operating costs, over a seven-year term.
The FedRAMP Marketplace lists Akamai Cloud as Legacy FedRAMP Ready, Class D (High), with 0 authorizations as of November 13, 2025 fedramp.gov.
Anthropic's warrant is struck less than 1% above the pre-deal price
Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for non-voting convertible Series B Preferred Stock, representing 7.7 million common shares on an as-converted basis, at $111.33 a share globenewswire.com. About 2% of common stock outstanding is expected to vest with the current commitment. The remaining roughly 3% vests at about 1% for each further $3 billion of cloud purchases "at mutually agreed upon terms," up to an additional $9 billion within seven years. Full expansion would bring the potential commitment to about $20 billion Akamai Announces $11.6 Billion….
Against the 143.72 million shares outstanding that CNBC lists, 7.7 million is 5.4%. The strike is 0.8% above the $110.41 prior close cnbc.com. Our read is that the structure ties Anthropic's equity upside directly to its own spending with Akamai. At the September 25 close of $113.94, the strike was $2.61 a share in the money.
Targets rose while the stock gave back most of its jump
SiliconANGLE reported the shares jumped more than 20% after hours on September 24 siliconangle.com. The next day, CNBC data show the stock opened at $125.23, touched $128.46 and closed up 3.20%, on 26.9 million shares against a 10-day average of 4.16 million cnbc.com.
| Firm | Prior target | New target |
|---|---|---|
| Guggenheim | $190 | $225 |
| BofA | $175 | $185 |
| JPMorgan | $158 | $167 |
| Piper Sandler | $125 | $158 |
| UBS | $143 | $148 |
| William Power (Hold) | $140 | $140 |
These figures come from TipRanks headlines dated September 25, 2026, carried on CNN's AKAM quote page cnn.com.
Dealroom's summary is internally inconsistent. Its headline gives a US$8.51 billion deal, and it puts the memory pre-buy at US$1.1 billion against the company's figure. It also pairs Oppenheimer's Outperform rating with a US$116.5 target, about 2% above the September 25 close dealroom.co. Our read is that the Oppenheimer figures it carries, including the 77-megawatt build, should be treated as unconfirmed.
The capex step lands in 2026, and CNBC lists Akamai's next earnings for about November 4, 2026 cnbc.com.