Akamai Lands $11.6B Anthropic Cloud Deal; Shares Close Up Only 3.2% on Capex Concerns

Akamai Technologies (AKAM) said Anthropic committed to spend $11.6 billion over seven years under an expanded cloud computing agreement, with an additional $9 billion in optional capacity that could lift the total contract value to $20.6 billion. The stock rose about 20% premarket but closed up just 3.2% on the session. The commitment is roughly four times Akamai's prior multi-year cloud infrastructure contract pool of $2.8 billion. Analysts expect Anthropic-related workloads to reach about $1.7 billion in annual revenue by 2028, compared with Akamai's Q2 cloud infrastructure services revenue of $99.3 million, up 39% year over year and about 9% of the group's $1.1 billion total. Supporting the deal requires an estimated $5.5 billion of capital spending, about 47% of the contract value, including a planned $1.7 billion increase in 2026 capex. The new business carries projected gross margins of 30% to 35%, versus group cash gross margin of about 70% in Q2, pressuring overall profitability as compute revenue scales.