New to this? Read it in simple words
- Anthropic, the company behind Claude, will pay Akamai $11.6 billion for computing over seven years.
- It is mainly for regular computer processors, not the special chips used to train AI.
- If Anthropic spends more, it can get up to about 5% of Akamai.
- Akamai’s shares jumped after the news.
- CPU
- The main, general-purpose processor inside a computer.
- Warrant
- A right to buy a company’s shares later at a set price.
- Cloud
- Computers in data centres that companies rent over the internet.
Akamai, long known for delivering websites and videos quickly, is growing into a cloud provider for AI companies. On September 24, after US markets closed, it announced an $11.6 billion, seven-year commitment from Anthropic, the maker of Claude.
What Anthropic is buying
The deal supports Anthropic’s growing need for CPU computing on Akamai Cloud, which runs from thousands of locations around the world. CPUs are the general-purpose processors found in most computers. GPUs are the chips most often used to train AI models.
Akamai says the commitment can grow by up to $9 billion more, for a total of about $20 billion.
Akamai expects to spend about $5.5 billion on equipment for this deal. It is also raising its spending this year by about $1.7 billion to buy parts such as memory in advance.
Figures come from Akamai’s announcement. Anthropic was not quoted in it.
A stake that grows with spending
Akamai gave Anthropic a warrant, a right to buy shares later, for up to about 5% of the company at $111.33 per share.
About 2% vests with the new commitment. Each extra $3 billion of spending unlocks about 1% more.
Chief executive Tom Leighton told Bloomberg that this is the first time Akamai has agreed to a warrant in a cloud deal. “It’s a serious step, but I think in this case it made sense to do,” he said, according to The Next Web.
“Anthropic is advancing the AI revolution,” Leighton said in Akamai’s announcement.
Investors cheered, with caveats
Akamai’s shares jumped in late trading on Thursday. Reports gave different figures for the size of the jump.
Akamai says the deal will not change its 2026 revenue forecast. The Next Web reports that the contract builds on a $1.8 billion deal the two companies signed in May.
According to The Next Web, Bloomberg noted investor concern about circular AI deals, in which companies that buy from each other also invest in each other. Critics say such deals make real demand for AI harder to measure.
Akamai’s announcement did not include a comment from Anthropic.
Sources
Every fact in this story comes from the sources below. Open them to check our work.
- 1Primary source · September 24, 2026Akamai Announces $11.6 Billion Multi-year Agreement with Anthropic to Support Growing Demand Akamai
- 2Research · September 24, 2026Akamai shares jump more than 20% on $11.6B Anthropic computing deal SiliconANGLE
- 3
- 4Research · September 24, 2026Anthropic signs $11.6bn Akamai cloud deal and gets warrant for 5% of Akamai The Next Web
Reports disagree on how far Akamai’s shares rose, so we leave that figure out. We found no comment from Anthropic.
Anthropic committed $11.6 billion to Akamai’s cloud. Silicon AI News, September 25, 2026. https://siliconainews.com/stories/anthropic-akamai-cpu-deal
Anthropic committed $11.6 billion over seven years to Akamai’s cloud, a large deal that investors cheered despite worries about circular deals. How we rate the mood
The mood shows how the news frames the event for the tech and AI world: as an opportunity (6 and above) or as a loss (below 5). It is not our verdict on who is right.