The Numbers That Matter
Akamai closed Friday at $113.94, up 3.20%, after trading as high as $133.82 in premarket (+21%) on the largest contract in its history.
The deal: $11.6 billion over seven years from Anthropic, with an option for another $9 billion, which would bring the total to roughly $20 billion.
Anthropic also got a warrant for up to 7.7 million Akamai shares, about 5% of the company, at $111.33 a share. That's barely above Thursday's $110.41 close.
The S&P 500 rose 0.51% to 7,743.41, the Dow gained 0.93% to 51,828.62, and the Nasdaq added 0.48% to 27,068.72.
Consumer sentiment fell to 48.1, a four-month low. Americans now expect 4.6% inflation over the next year, up from 4.0% in August.
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The Company Nobody Thought Of
For most investors, Akamai is the company that quietly speeds up websites and blocks cyberattacks. It's been a value stock with steady revenue for years, and nobody lists it as an AI name.
On Thursday night, Anthropic changed that.
Akamai announced a seven-year, $11.6 billion commitment from the Claude maker to run Anthropic's fast-growing CPU workloads on Akamai's distributed cloud. Management said revenue from the deal should ramp to about $1.7 billion a year by 2028. The two companies built in room for up to $9 billion more in future commitments.
For scale: earlier this year, Akamai signed $2.8 billion of multi-year cloud infrastructure commitments and called that a strong year. This single contract is about four times that.
Investor's Business Daily summed up the headline: "No Nvidia Needed." Anthropic isn't renting Akamai for top-end GPUs. It's renting ordinary CPUs spread across Akamai's global network, the generalist chips that are suddenly in demand again as AI agents need to be hosted and run close to users.
The Catch in the Fine Print
The stock opened like a rocket. Then it started to think.
Anthropic didn't just sign a contract; it got paid to sign it. Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant to buy up to 7.7 million shares, about 5% of the company, at $111.33 for seven years. About 3.1 million of those shares (2%) vest right away with this deal. Another roughly 1% vests for every additional $3 billion Anthropic commits.
That strike price matters. Akamai closed Thursday at $110.41, below the strike. By Friday morning the warrant was already in the money on paper. Every dollar the stock rose went partly to Anthropic.
That's why the premarket spike of more than 21% didn't hold. By late morning the stock had slid from a $129.16 high to around $117.60. It closed at $113.94, up 3.2%, keeping only a sliver of the early surge.
Wall Street split. Piper Sandler said the deal "drastically changes the financial profile" and could move Akamai from a "value" asset to a "hypergrowth" one. It estimated the contract implies about $1.66 billion of annual recurring revenue, roughly four times the size of the whole cloud infrastructure business at the end of the second quarter. Evercore ISI noted that CPU workloads bring in more revenue per megawatt and better cash margins than GPU work. RBC wasn't convinced and kept its Sector Perform rating.
Why This Is Bigger Than Akamai
The real story is the buyer.
Anthropic is signing computing deals at a pace few companies in history have matched, and it's doing it with equity sweeteners attached. This is the same playbook we flagged in what we're watching ahead of the Anthropic IPO: the AI labs are using their scale to take pieces of their suppliers.
It wasn't the only example Friday. Atlas Energy Solutions (NYSE: AESI) jumped as much as 17% and closed up 13.5% after saying two subsidiaries signed cost-reimbursement agreements with "a leading frontier AI lab." An oilfield sand-and-logistics company is now an AI power supplier.
This is how AI money spreads out. First it went to Nvidia, then to the memory makers, then to power and cooling. Now it's reaching CPUs, edge networks and the companies that keep generators running.
The investors who make the most in this phase are the ones who spot the next supplier before the contract is public. The ones who buy after a 21% premarket gap often end up giving part of it back.
The Rest of the Tape
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) was one of the biggest drivers of the S&P 500's gain, rising 3.66% to $516.17 after launching its new Copilot "super app" with a built-in coding tool and an always-on AI agent.
Hopes for peace helped too. Iran's foreign minister laid out a seven-day roadmap to end the war. Under it, the U.S. would lift its naval blockade and waive oil sanctions, and the Strait of Hormuz would reopen on day seven. Brent fell more than 2%, though the 10-year Treasury yield held near 5.17%, around its highest level since 2007.
Not everyone got to join the rally:
Nike (NYSE: NKE) fell 0.67% after Bank of America downgraded it to Underperform, warning that sales could keep shrinking through fiscal 2027.
Twilio (NYSE: TWLO) dropped 7.96% after HSBC downgraded it, saying optimism about Twilio's role in Meta's Muse may have run ahead of reality. It's the first crack in the Muse-fueled tech rally.
Zscaler (NASDAQ: ZS) slid 10.06% on a surprise leadership change in its revenue organization just before its investor day.
Costco (NASDAQ: COST) rose 2.93% to $922.77 after its fourth-quarter beat.
What Lands Next
The weekend belongs to Washington and Tehran. If the U.S. accepts Iran's seven-day timetable, oil could fall hard and yields could follow. If the talks stall, Monday opens with the same 5%-plus 10-year yield that has pressured the market all week.
Next week is the busiest on the calendar in a month. PCE inflation and Micron's earnings land Wednesday, Nike reports Thursday after the close, and the September jobs report arrives Friday.
Friday showed investors who's funding the AI buildout. Anthropic is writing the checks, and it's taking a share of each supplier in return. Akamai's shareholders learned both sides of that deal on the same morning.
This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.
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