Anthropic secured warrants covering up to 5% of cloud supplier Akamai.
Anthropic will pay Akamai Technologies $11.6 billion over seven years for computing power, TechCrunch reported on 25 September.
It is the largest contract in Akamai's history. Anthropic can add up to $9 billion more, taking the total to about $20 billion.
The unusual part is the warrant. Anthropic has the right to buy up to 7.7 million Akamai shares at a fixed price of $111.33 each, about 5% of the company. About 2% vests with the first payment. Roughly another 1% vests for every extra $3 billion Anthropic commits. Akamai has never attached a warrant to a cloud deal before.
The more Anthropic spends, the more of its supplier it can own.
Akamai expects to spend about $5.5 billion building the capacity. It expects $150 million to $300 million of revenue from the deal in the second half of 2027, rising to about $1.7 billion a year by the end of 2028. Its shares rose as much as 17% after hours.
TechCrunch called it a bet on ordinary processors rather than the graphics chips most AI deals buy.
Would a stake in the supplier change how you sign a seven-year computing contract?
Sources
Our file on Anthropic
- 7 Oct
Analysts said Claude subscribers use 42% of Anthropic's computing. They pay 10% of sales.
- 6 Oct
Microsoft planned $1 billion for employees using Claude. Then it cut over a third.
- 3 Oct
Epic stopped building new products for six weeks. An AI model found the flaws.
- 1 Oct
Anthropic said robots could do most physical tasks. They're cost-competitive on 0.3%.
- 1 Oct
Trump ordered federal agencies to rename AI. The new word is Super Intelligence.
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