Akamai shares rose Friday after Anthropic committed to use $11.6 billion of its cloud services over seven years, with a possible $9 billion expansion that would take the deal above $20 billion. Akamai says its infrastructure will support Anthropic's growing CPU workloads.
Anthropic also received a warrant to buy convertible preferred stock representing roughly 5% of Akamai's outstanding shares at $111.33 per share. A portion representing 2% vested with the deal's announcement; the remaining 3% will vest as Anthropic commits additional sums, in 1% increments per $3 billion, up to the full $9 billion expansion.
Akamai reported $2.8 billion in multiyear cloud customer commitments in its August second-quarter earnings release. The article characterizes Akamai's role in serving Anthropic's CPU demands as further evidence that AI computing is shifting beyond GPU-based model training toward CPU-supported inference. The Motley Fool disclosed that it holds and recommends Akamai shares.
