Anthropic Can Build 5% Akamai Stake Through Cloud Spending

Anthropic’s $11.6 billion cloud contract gives it a path to own up to roughly 5% of Akamai, with the stake growing if it buys up to $9 billion more in infrastructure. Akamai issued a seven-year warrant for preferred shares initially convertible into 7,741,020 common shares, at an exercise price of $111.33 each.

The arrangement ties a customer’s ownership claim in its supplier directly to that customer’s spending. Akamai must also build the capacity first: it estimates about $5.5 billion in capital expenditure to serve the initial commitment.

Akamai operates cloud and network infrastructure, historically best known for delivering websites and online video quickly. Anthropic is buying capacity for its AI workloads, adding another supplier to its expanding compute portfolio and reported custom-chip plans.

The warrant is not an ordinary common-stock grant. Anthropic received the right to buy up to 387,051 shares of Series B non-voting convertible preferred stock. Those shares receive dividends and liquidation proceeds as though converted into common stock, but Anthropic cannot choose to turn them into voting shares while it, or one of its wholly owned subsidiaries, holds them. Conversion happens automatically if the stock is transferred outside that group.

That leaves Anthropic with economic exposure to Akamai, rather than boardroom votes. Existing Akamai common shareholders face dilution if the warrant is exercised.

The first chunk is not vested merely because the companies signed a contract. Forty percent of the warrant—about 2% of Akamai’s common stock on an as-converted basis—vests when Anthropic makes its first payment under Project Plan 3, subject to the agreement’s conditions.

The rest requires Anthropic to make bigger commitments:

Each additional $3 billion of contractual value unlocks 20% of the warrant, equivalent to about 1% of Akamai common stock on an as-converted basis.
Three such tranches could add $9 billion to the initial seven-year agreement.
At the full expansion, the cloud relationship would total roughly $20 billion and the warrant would reach its full 5% potential stake.

“It’s a serious step, but I think in this case it made sense to do,” Akamai CEO and co-founder Tom Leighton told Bloomberg, as reported by The Next Web. “It helps bring the companies together.”

Akamai says this is its first customer cloud deal to include a warrant, according to independent reporting by The Next Web. The structure is a particularly direct version of the reciprocal arrangements that have drawn investor concern in AI infrastructure: the supplier sells capacity, while the buyer gets a larger economic claim in the supplier when it purchases more of it.

Anthropic’s commitment is not unconditional revenue. The project plans are subject to delivery and service-availability requirements, and Anthropic can terminate a plan after a material outage under specified conditions. The master agreement also includes termination rights for material uncured breaches.

Akamai’s $5.5 billion infrastructure outlay

The other half of this deal is physical. Akamai expects its initial $11.6 billion commitment to require approximately $5.5 billion in capital spending—servers, memory, networking equipment and the surrounding infrastructure needed to deliver the service.

It has already increased planned 2026 spending by about $1.7 billion to secure and pre-purchase supply-chain components, including memory. Separately, Akamai authorized manufacturer Jabil to buy roughly $1.7 billion in memory components that Akamai must pay for when received. If that inventory is not used, Akamai says it could face carrying and disposal costs.

That is the hard edge of the AI infrastructure boom. A cloud contract can be worth billions on paper, but the supplier must buy scarce equipment and build capacity before much of that revenue arrives. Those are the constraints on AI data-center spending in their most concrete form: the bill for hardware does not wait for a customer’s future usage.

Akamai is making that bet while its older delivery business is shrinking. In the quarter ended June 30, 2026, delivery and other cloud-applications revenue fell 6% year over year to $395.9 million, which the company attributed in part to lower pricing on contract renewals. Its GAAP operating margin fell from 15% to 7% over the same period.

Cloud infrastructure services moved the other way, rising 39% year over year in that quarter. The Anthropic contract offers Akamai a route into a much larger category, but it does so by concentrating a vast capital build-out around one customer whose spending unlocks equity in the supplier.

Akamai is the source for the warrant terms, its projected spending and its expected expansion; those figures are estimates, not completed investment or recognized revenue. Anthropic was not quoted in the announcement or the independent report. Its broader enterprise business strategy now includes a supplier relationship in which every additional $3 billion it commits can buy it another percentage point of Akamai.

Key Takeaways

Anthropic received a seven-year warrant for preferred shares initially convertible into up to 7,741,020 Akamai common shares.
The full warrant represents about 5% of Akamai’s common stock on an as-converted basis.
About 2% vests upon Anthropic’s first payment under Project Plan 3, not simply upon signing the $11.6 billion commitment.
The remaining 3% requires up to $9 billion in additional contractual commitments from Anthropic.
Akamai estimates it will spend about $5.5 billion in capital expenditure to serve the initial contract.