Akamai announced a seven-year $11.6 billion cloud computing deal with Anthropic, with an option to grow to $20.6 billion. As part of the deal, Akamai issued Anthropic warrants for about 7.7 million shares, 40% of which are vested, with the remaining 60% vesting if Anthropic adds workloads.
Wireless network enhancements and Internet of Things deployments will increase data traffic, adding demand to house content and services as close to customers as possible.
Bears
Media customers of CDNs will continue to insource the transmission of their content, making a content segment turnaround more difficult.
Akamai operates a content delivery network, in which customers store content on distributed servers to deliver it to their own customers more quickly. Akamai has over 350,000 servers distributed over 4,350 points of presence in more than 700 cities globally. This network supports upward of 20% of global internet traffic, generating massive amounts of data. Using data generated by the delivery network, the firm offers cybersecurity products and cloud computing services, ranging from API security to zero-trust enterprise access, which has surpassed the delivery network in revenue and importance. As of 2026, the primary focus has shifted to offering computing hardware as a service, with an emphasis on serving large language model providers such as Anthropic.