Akamai signs an $11.6 billion multi-year deal to supply Anthropic with distributed cloud capacity

Akamai Technologies announced on September 24 that it has signed an $11.6 billion multi-year agreement with Anthropic. According to Akamai's release, Anthropic will use Akamai Cloud's distributed infrastructure and software to support growth in CPU workloads at scale. The deal also allows the relationship to expand by up to $9 billion more. The release is Akamai's own announcement. The excerpt does not give the contract's length, delivery schedule or the conditions for the expansion. The agreement adds to a run of large infrastructure commitments tied to Anthropic, including the Nscale contracts disclosed earlier this week. It also points to a less-discussed part of AI demand. Much of the attention on AI capacity goes to accelerator chips, but agent workloads also need general-purpose CPU compute for tasks such as running tools, sandboxes and orchestration. For Akamai, a company best known for content delivery and edge networking, this is one of the largest cloud contracts it has disclosed. It also ties part of the company's growth to one AI customer.