Akamai Shares Rally on $11.6 Billion Anthropic Compute Deal, Analysts Upgrade Outlook

Akamai Technologies surged Friday after announcing an $11.6 billion agreement with artificial intelligence firm Anthropic to supply dedicated cloud computing capacity over the next seven years. Shares climbed as much as 16.4% to $128.46 before settling with an 8% gain, extending a 36% year-to-date advance driven largely by first-quarter momentum.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based cloud and cybersecurity provider will deliver central processing unit (CPU) infrastructure tailored for agentic AI workloads, with an option to expand the deal to $20 billion. Oppenheimer analysts estimate the contract represents roughly 77 megawatts of computing power, requiring approximately $5.5 billion in capital expenditure from Akamai. The company has now secured $14.6 billion in total cloud infrastructure commitments year-to-date, with DA Davidson projecting a 30% EBIT margin on that backlog at full run-rate.

Wall Street responded bullishly across the board:

• Morgan Stanley (Overweight, $165 target): The deal validates structural growth improvement, potentially lifting 2027 revenue growth estimates from 12.5% to roughly 16% versus 5% in 2025.
• Piper Sandler (Overweight, $158 target): The expandable $20 billion agreement, which includes an Anthropic equity stake, transforms Akamai from a value play into a “hypergrowth” asset, with cloud infrastructure on track to surpass security revenue by late 2028.
• DA Davidson (Buy, $185 target): The Master Services Agreement covers Projects 2 and 3 of the Anthropic partnership. Beyond this deal, management outlined a broader vision for Akamai Cloud spanning conversational voice agents, robotics, real-time virtual world rendering, and AI video intelligence for surveillance.
• Oppenheimer (Outperform, $180 target): At roughly $70 million per megawatt in capital intensity, the build-out includes a $1.7 billion memory pre-buy. The firm notes Akamai has not disclosed deal-specific power requirements.
• Evercore ISI (Outperform, $175 target): The agreement reinforces a multi-year revenue reacceleration thesis extending into 2028, and the partnership does not preclude Akamai from working with other frontier AI labs.

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