Akamai's $11.6 billion Anthropic deal comes with $5.5 billion of spending and a warrant struck at $111.33

Akamai Technologies shares were up 8.95% at $120.29 at 10:51 a.m. Friday, according to Nasdaq.com, after the content-delivery and cloud company said Anthropic has committed about $11.6 billion over seven years for dedicated computing capacity. The stock traded as high as $128.46 in the morning before giving back part of the gain, and it remains well below its 52-week high of $165.45. Bloomberg reported the deal as a $12 billion agreement.

The headline number is the revenue. The Form 8-K and press release Akamai filed with the SEC on Thursday show what it costs to earn it.

Nearly half the contract goes back out as capex

Akamai estimates total capital spending tied to the commitment at about $5.5 billion. That is 47% of the $11.6 billion contract value, by our arithmetic. Spread evenly, the contract works out to about $1.66 billion of revenue a year over seven years, though the filing does not give the payment schedule.

The spending also comes early. Akamai said it expects about $1.7 billion of additional capital expenditure in 2026 alone, to secure and pre-purchase supply chain components, including memory, while it expects no change to its 2026 revenue guidance. In plain terms, this year Akamai pays for hardware and gets none of the revenue. Investors in AI infrastructure names have been watching exactly that gap between spending now and revenue later, and it is why the balance sheet will matter as much as the backlog when Akamai next reports.

The warrant is already in the money

Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for up to 387,051 shares of a new non-voting Series B preferred stock, each convertible into 20 common shares, or 7,741,020 common shares in total. The exercise price is $111.33 per common share, the 30-day volume-weighted average before Sept. 18. Akamai says that is up to about 5% of its common stock outstanding.

• First tranche, 40% of the warrant (about 2% of the company): vests on Anthropic's first payment under the new project plan, according to the 8-K.
• Three more tranches of 20% each: each vests only when Anthropic commits another $3 billion, up to $9 billion more, which would take the relationship to roughly $20 billion.
• Anthropic must pay the exercise price in cash, and the preferred shares convert to common only if transferred outside Anthropic.

At Friday morning's $120.29, the warrant sits $8.96 a share above its strike. Across all 7.74 million shares that is about $69 million of paper value, and about $28 million on the first tranche alone, by our math. If Anthropic exercised everything, Akamai would receive about $862 million in cash.

What the press release leaves out

The 8-K lists the exit terms. Anthropic may terminate each project plan on notice of a material outage, subject to conditions, and may end the master agreement if Akamai is taken over by a direct competitor of Anthropic. Each project plan runs for an initial seven years from its service start date. Akamai says the full agreement will be filed with its third-quarter 10-Q.

For traders, that makes this a contract with conditions rather than guaranteed revenue: payments depend on Akamai delivering capacity and meeting availability requirements. The deal adds to more than $2.8 billion of multi-year cloud infrastructure commitments Akamai says it announced earlier this year. The stock first jumped in after-hours trading Thursday.

Sources: Akamai Form 8-K and Exhibit 99.1, filed Sept. 24, 2026; Nasdaq.com quote for AKAM; Bloomberg. The Company Chronicle is published using Anthropic's Claude models; Anthropic has no role in our coverage. This is market information, not investment advice.