Seven-year CPU capacity pact can grow by another $9 billion; $5.5 billion in related capex is on the table
Akamai Technologies Inc. has signed its largest contract on record: an $11.6 billion, seven-year commitment from Anthropic PBC for dedicated cloud computing and managed support. The company disclosed the terms Thursday in a press release and a Form 8-K.
The work lives under Project Plan 2 and Project Plan 3, both dated Sept. 18, sitting on a master services agreement the two sides struck May 5. Anthropic is buying capacity and support for CPU workloads. Akamai says those loads are accelerating. Each plan runs seven years from its service start date. Either side can walk under specified breach, bankruptcy, or outage terms. Anthropic can also terminate after a material outage, subject to conditions in the filing.
The same filing flags a possible expansion of as much as $9 billion more. That would take the total potential commitment to about $20 billion. Nothing in the 8-K treats that second slice as signed.
This pact sits on top of more than $2.8 billion in multi-year Cloud Infrastructure Services commitments Akamai already announced this year across its customer base.
Akamai Cloud, the company said, runs compute from core to edge across thousands of points of presence. The hardware mix is diversified. The pitch to Anthropic — and to anyone else building agent and model traffic — is scale plus the security stack Akamai already sells to large enterprises.
“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, Akamai. “Akamai has an unparalleled reputation for helping our customers achieve their business-critical goals and build the future. Our expanding global footprint, combined with our years of experience serving the world’s largest enterprises, positions us to be the infrastructure provider for secure and responsible AI applications and workloads.”
There is equity in the package. Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for nonvoting convertible Series B preferred stock. On an as-converted basis that covers 7.7 million common shares, or up to about 5% of shares outstanding. The common-stock equivalent exercise price is $111.33. The warrant runs seven years.
Vesting is staged. About 2% of shares outstanding is expected to vest with the $11.6 billion commitment. The rest, about 3%, vests if Anthropic adds commercial value. Each extra $3 billion of cloud-services purchases, on mutually agreed terms, vests about 1% more. The 8-K is more granular: 40% of the warrant shares vest on Anthropic’s first payment under Project Plan 3, with three 20% tranches tied to each additional $3 billion, provided the master agreement stays in force. The preferred converts 20-for-1 into common. It does not vote, except as Delaware law requires.
Building the capacity is not cheap. Total capital expenditures tied to the $11.6 billion commitment are estimated at about $5.5 billion. Akamai said it expects no change to 2026 revenue guidance. It does expect 2026 capex to rise by about $1.7 billion so it can lock down supply-chain parts, memory included, before they get scarce.
That memory buy has a named path. On Sept. 24, Akamai authorized Jabil Inc., under an existing master services agreement from 2019, to purchase about $1.7 billion of memory components. Akamai pays the supplier invoices when Jabil takes receipt. Jabil holds unused parts on consignment and Akamai buys them at cost as they go into machines.
A day earlier, on Sept. 23, Akamai signed a master product and services agreement and a seven-year statement of work with Lenovo Global Technologies Ireland International Limited for hardware, software, and related services.
For executives watching the P&L, the near-term tell is capex first, revenue later. The 8-K and release do not put 2026 revenue from this contract on the books. For developers and infrastructure leads, the practical fact is simpler: a frontier lab is parking a multiyear CPU estate on Akamai’s distributed cloud, not only on the usual hyperscale names. Termination rights, service levels, and delivery conditions still govern whether that capacity actually stays lit.
A separate Form 8-K filed Sept. 25 reported Audit Committee amendments to Akamai’s Code of Ethics, adopted Sept. 22. No provisions were waived.