Anthropic drops $11.6B on Akamai cloud infrastructure

Anthropic just committed $11.6 billion to Akamai over seven years for cloud infrastructure.

TechCrunch reports that Anthropic signed the massive deal, which stands as the largest contract in Akamai's history. It expands on a $1.8 billion agreement reported in May. Under the new contract, Akamai issued Anthropic warrants for up to a 5% stock stake tied to future spending milestones.

Why it matters: While GPUs get most of the AI attention, AI agents also need standard CPUs to browse the web and run code. This deal highlights that growing demand. It also flips the usual industry pattern: instead of cloud providers buying equity in AI startups, Akamai gave its customer stock options that vest as Anthropic spends more.

The commitment relies on Akamai meeting specific service and availability requirements. Akamai expects to spend $5.5 billion building out capacity for the deal, and its stock jumped up to 17% in after-hours trading.

AI labs still have an endless appetite for compute, and standard server chips are officially along for the ride.