Anthropic Signs $1.8B Cloud Deal With Akamai to Power Claude Growth

Benzinga reported Friday that Anthropic has agreed a $1.8 billion, seven-year cloud computing arrangement with Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM), citing Bloomberg sources. The Anthropic Akamai cloud deal is designed to expand the compute backbone powering the Claude family of AI models as user adoption accelerates sharply.

A Deal Hidden in Plain Sight

Akamai had already disclosed the agreement during its first-quarter earnings on Thursday. The company described its counterparty only as a “leading frontier model provider,” declining to name the client. Bloomberg’s subsequent reporting identified that partner as Anthropic.

The disclosure sent Akamai shares surging more than 26% by the close of the regular session, settling at $147.71. An after-hours jump of nearly 30% followed. Year to date, the stock has now gained more than 73%.

Claude Usage Jumps Eightyfold

At its “Code with Claude” developer event in San Francisco, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told attendees the company had seen roughly 80-times growth in annualized revenue and usage. That expansion has been concentrated in coding assistance and enterprise automation workflows. The velocity of that growth appears to have forced the company to secure fresh compute capacity well beyond what existing cloud arrangements could accommodate.

Akamai’s Financial Picture

The cybersecurity and cloud computing firm posted first-quarter revenue of $1.074 billion for the period ended March 31. That figure edged past analyst consensus by a slim margin. Earnings per share came in at $1.61, beating estimates by roughly 9%. Akamai currently carries a market capitalisation near $21.75 billion, with its 52-week range spanning from a low of $69.79 to a high of $149.76.

The Broader AI Infrastructure Race

The agreement fits a wider pattern of AI developers locking in multi-year compute commitments as demand outpaces supply. Rivals including OpenAI and Google DeepMind have similarly moved to secure dedicated infrastructure through long-term partnerships. For Akamai, the contract represents a meaningful strategic pivot toward large-scale AI workloads from its traditional content-delivery and cybersecurity base.

Anthropic closed its most recent funding round at a $61.5 billion valuation, giving it the capital base to pursue agreements of this scale. The seven-year term of the Akamai arrangement suggests both parties expect Claude-related workloads to grow substantially before the contract expires.

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