Anthropic to pay Akamai $11.6 billion over seven years in cloud deal

Anthropic 将在七年内向 Akamai 支付 116 亿美元云服务费用

Anthropic will spend $11.6 billion over seven years on Akamai’s cloud infrastructure, Akamai said Thursday. That’s more than six times the size of a $1.8 billion deal between the two companies that Bloomberg reported in May. Akamai 周四表示，Anthropic 将在七年内向 Akamai 的云基础设施投入 116 亿美元。这比彭博社 5 月份报道的两家公司之间 18 亿美元的交易规模高出六倍多。

The commitment isn’t ironclad; according to Akamai’s securities filing, it depends on Akamai meeting certain delivery and service-availability requirements, and either company can end the agreement under certain conditions. 这项承诺并非铁板钉钉；根据 Akamai 的证券备案文件，该协议取决于 Akamai 是否满足特定的交付和服务可用性要求，且任何一方均可在特定条件下终止协议。

The deal is the largest in Akamai’s history and continues Anthropic’s compute gobbling-streak. It also represents a bet on a less-hyped corner of AI infrastructure: CPUs. Demand for CPUs, the general-purpose chips that handle work like running code and browsing the web, has grown as AI agents take on more tasks, though Akamai didn’t say what Anthropic will use them for. 这是 Akamai 历史上最大的一笔交易，也延续了 Anthropic 对计算资源的疯狂渴求。这也代表了对 AI 基础设施中一个较少被炒作的领域——CPU 的押注。随着 AI 智能体承担更多任务，对 CPU（处理运行代码和浏览网页等工作的通用芯片）的需求不断增长，尽管 Akamai 并未透露 Anthropic 将如何使用这些资源。

Akamai won’t see revenue from the deal this year. On an investor call Thursday, executives said they expect $150 million to $300 million in 2027, starting in the second half, with revenue reaching an annual pace of about $1.7 billion by the end of 2028. Akamai 今年不会从该交易中获得收入。在周四的投资者电话会议上，高管们表示，预计 2027 年下半年将开始产生 1.5 亿至 3 亿美元的收入，到 2028 年底，年收入规模将达到约 17 亿美元。

To build out the capacity, Akamai expects to spend about $5.5 billion. It is also adding about $1.7 billion to this year’s capital spending to buy components such as memory in advance. 为了扩充产能，Akamai 预计将投入约 55 亿美元。此外，该公司还将今年的资本支出增加了约 17 亿美元，用于提前采购内存等组件。

As part of the deal, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant, essentially the right to buy shares at a set price, for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares, or up to about 5% of the company’s outstanding stock, at $111.33 a share. 作为交易的一部分，Akamai 向 Anthropic 发行了认股权证（本质上是以固定价格购买股票的权利），涉及可转换为 770 万股普通股的无投票权优先股，约占公司流通股的 5%，行权价为每股 111.33 美元。

About 2% is expected to vest, or become available to Anthropic once it makes its first payment under the deal. The rest is tied to Anthropic spending more. Each additional $3 billion it commits to Akamai’s cloud services unlocks roughly another 1%, so the deal could grow by as much as $9 billion, to about $20 billion in total. 预计约 2% 的份额将在 Anthropic 完成首次付款后归属（即生效）。其余部分则与 Anthropic 的后续支出挂钩。每额外向 Akamai 云服务投入 30 亿美元，即可解锁约 1% 的份额，因此该交易规模最高可能增加 90 亿美元，总额达到约 200 亿美元。

It’s the first time Akamai has attached a warrant to a cloud deal, and the contract is the largest in company history, Bloomberg reported. The warrant flips the more common pattern in circular AI deals, in which suppliers — chipmakers and cloud providers — invest directly in the AI labs that buy their products. 据彭博社报道，这是 Akamai 首次在云交易中附加认股权证，且该合同是公司历史上规模最大的。这种认股权证模式颠覆了 AI 领域常见的“循环交易”模式，即供应商（芯片制造商和云服务商）直接投资于购买其产品的 AI 实验室。

Here, the supplier is instead giving its customer a potential stake, one that grows as Anthropic’s spending with Akamai does. AMD used a similar structure with OpenAI last year, tying warrants to chip-purchase milestones. 在这里，供应商反而给予客户潜在的股权，且该股权会随着 Anthropic 在 Akamai 支出的增加而增长。AMD 去年与 OpenAI 采用了类似的结构，将认股权证与芯片采购里程碑挂钩。

Anthropic is no stranger to such arrangements. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and AMD have all invested or agreed to invest in the company while selling it chips or cloud capacity. CEO Dario Amodei told The New York Times last December that Anthropic does not participate in these deals at the “same scale as some other players.” Anthropic 对此类安排并不陌生。亚马逊、谷歌、微软和 AMD 在向其出售芯片或云容量的同时，都已投资或同意投资该公司。首席执行官 Dario Amodei 去年 12 月告诉《纽约时报》，Anthropic 参与这些交易的“规模并不像其他一些参与者那样大”。

Akamai shares rose as much as 17% in after-hours trading on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported. 据《华尔街日报》报道，Akamai 股价在周四盘后交易中一度上涨了 17%。