Akamai will spend $5.5 billion to build the CPU capacity Anthropic is renting for $11.6 billion

Spread evenly, $11.6 billion over seven years is about $1.66 billion a year ^[22]. Oppenheimer took a run-rate of about $1.7 billion and Akamai's portfolio average of $22 million of annual revenue per megawatt, and estimated that the contract needs about 77 megawatts ^[10]. On the same numbers the $5.5 billion build costs about $70 million a megawatt: $22 million of it is the memory pre-buy and $49 million is the rest ^[11]. So each megawatt costs a little over three years of its own revenue to build ^[23]. Those three years are gross revenue. Power, staff and the managed support services DA Davidson says Akamai will supply with the capacity come on top ^[15].

Spending comes well ahead of revenue. Akamai does not expect the deal to be profitable this year ^[7]. It expects $150 million to $300 million from the contract in the second half of 2027 as services ramp ^[8]. A full half-year at the contract's average rate would be about $830 million, so the midpoint of that range is roughly 27% of the pace the contract has to average over its term ^[24].

"We estimate the EBIT Margin for the $14.6B in [cloud infrastructure services] commitments signed YTD is ~30% at full revenue run-rate," Rudy Kessinger of DA Davidson said in a Friday report ^[12]. Anthropic's contract is about 79% of that $14.6 billion ^[25], so the estimate is mostly an estimate of one contract's margin. Morgan Stanley wrote that the midpoint of management's range lifts its revenue growth estimate from 12.5% to about 16%, against the 5% growth Akamai reported in 2025 ^[14].

Akamai builds the capacity Anthropic rents ^[21], and also pays Anthropic in equity. CNBC's figures, a 16.4% rise to $128.46 at Friday's high ^[9], imply a Thursday close near $110.36, which puts the $111.33 strike about 1% above the pre-deal price ^[26]. At that high, the roughly 3.1 million shares vesting under the initial commitment were $17.13 each in the money, about $53 million in all ^[27]. The remaining 3% vests in 1% steps for each additional $3 billion Anthropic commits ^[5]. Three steps is the whole $9 billion option ^[28], so Anthropic collects the full 5% only by taking the contract to about $20 billion ^[3].

On this evidence, the case that agents are opening a CPU market outside the GPU clouds rests on one buyer. DA Davidson wrote that the capacity is "specifically to support Anthropic's accelerating CPU workload demands" ^[15]. CNBC reported that networks of CPUs generally suit the coordinated work agentic AI requires, citing technologists it did not name ^[16]. DA Davidson also wrote that the new commitment is Project 2 and Project 3 of Anthropic's master services agreement ^[20], numbering that implies an earlier Anthropic project. The reports did not specify whether the $2.8 billion of commitments Akamai signed earlier in 2026 ^[19] was for CPUs or GPUs, or how much of it came from Anthropic.

Anthropic could exercise the option, with Piper Sandler's forecast holding that cloud infrastructure overtakes Akamai's security business by 4Q28 ^[17]. Or Anthropic could stay at $11.6 billion, leaving Akamai with a $5.5 billion build sized for one tenant ^[6]. Or another frontier lab could sign, as Evercore notes the deal allows ^[18]. I think that last outcome decides whether this is a market. The counter-case is that Akamai does not need a market, because at Oppenheimer's figures one customer covers the build cost in revenue in a little over three years of a seven-year term ^[23]. A second lab signing for CPU capacity at anything near this size before the 2027 ramp would support the market thesis. If no second buyer has signed by then, Akamai has a large contract with a single customer.