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Akamai found a very expensive roommate
Akamai reportedly signed a $1.8 billion, seven-year cloud computing deal with Anthropic to help power the next phase of Claude’s growth. Translation: the AI arms race is so compute-hungry that even infrastructure companies are getting dragged into the spotlight like they’re the new cool kid at school.
The market clearly liked the plot twist. Akamai’s stock jumped nearly 30% in late trading after the news, because a multiyear deal of this size is the kind of thing that makes investors sit up and say, “Wait, you were that close to the AI money?”
Why investors should care
Akamai is mostly known for security and cloud delivery, not for being the first name people blurt out in a dinner party AI convo. But this deal hints at a bigger story:
- Anthropic is still scrambling for more compute as Claude adoption accelerates for coding and automation.
- Akamai gets a marquee customer and a huge long-term revenue stream.
- Alphabet’s Google and SpaceX are also in the mix, which tells you how crowded and competitive AI infrastructure has become.
The AI infrastructure squeeze is real
Anthropic said at its Code with Claude conference that it’s seeing “80x growth” in annualized revenue and usage. That kind of demand doesn’t politely wait in line — it sends companies shopping for every spare chip, server, and data center they can find.
Akamai also had a strong first quarter, with revenue of $1.074 billion and EPS of $1.61, both ahead of estimates. So this wasn’t just a random moonshot headline; it landed on top of an already upbeat earnings day, which helped turn the stock into a rocket ship.
Big picture: if AI is the gold rush, Akamai just sold the shovels — and investors noticed.