【AI Infrastructure】Akamai secures $1.8 billion, the largest contract in history, reportedly with Anthropic. Stock price soars over 26%.

Cybersecurity and cloud computing company Akamai Technologies (NYSE: AKAM) saw its stock jump sharply on Friday, rising more than 26% intraday to a high of $151. The company announced a 7-year, $1.8 billion cloud infrastructure services contract with a “leading frontier model provider,” which is Akamai’s largest contract in its history. The market is optimistic that the company can tap into artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure demand.

Akamai did not disclose the client’s name. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the client is Anthropic. Anthropic has recently seen a surge in demand for computing resources to support growth in AI software usage such as Claude. Anthropic declined to comment, and Akamai has yet to respond to Bloomberg’s inquiries.

CDN company becomes an AI infrastructure stock—market revalues Akamai

Akamai has previously been known mainly for content delivery networks (CDN) and network security services, but in recent years it has accelerated its expansion of cloud infrastructure, especially compute cloud services that support AI inference. The company said it can now leverage a distributed platform across 4,300 locations, 700 cities, and 130 countries worldwide—allowing customers’ workloads, AI agents, and AI applications to run closer to users and data, shortening response times.

This $1.8 billion contract is viewed as an important validation of Akamai’s cloud transformation. In the first quarter, cloud infrastructure services revenue grew 40% year over year to $95 million, the fastest-growing segment among its three main business lines. By contrast, revenue from traditional content delivery and other cloud applications fell 7% year over year to $389 million.

Anthropic races for compute power—Claude demand surges

Anthropic has recently been actively looking for more computing resources. CEO Dario Amodei previously said that in the first quarter, Anthropic’s annualized revenue and usage saw an 80-fold increase, and it is working to secure more compute power as quickly as possible. In addition to Akamai, Anthropic has also reached out to Google and SpaceX, owned by Musk, for support with chips and cloud services.

Akamai’s total revenue in the first quarter grew 6% year over year to more than $1 billion, while network security revenue grew 11% year over year to $590 million. The company expects second-quarter revenue to be between $1.075 billion and $1.1 billion, with adjusted earnings per share (EPS) between $1.45 and $1.65. Although the traditional content delivery business remains under pressure, rapid growth in large AI contracts and cloud infrastructure revenue has led the market to reassess Akamai’s role in the AI infrastructure supply chain.

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