Most investors still think of Akamai as the company that makes websites load faster. That version of Akamai peaked around 2015.
The version trading up 8% this morning is something different. Shares of Akamai Technologies surged Wednesday after Bank of America upgraded the cloud computing company, citing growing confidence in its transformation into an artificial intelligence infrastructure provider. BofA analyst Tal Liani upgraded Akamai to Buy from Neutral with a price target of $175, up from $130.
The catalyst behind the conviction: Akamai disclosed a $1.8 billion, seven-year cloud deal with Anthropic, its largest contract ever. The stock rose 27% in a single day when the deal was announced in May as the CDN company’s AI cloud pivot received its most significant validation.
Here’s what that number actually means. The seven-year structure works out to roughly $257 million per year on average. Akamai’s full-year 2026 revenue guidance midpoint is $4.5 billion, so a single customer at full ramp will represent close to roughly 6% of total revenue from one contract. That’s not a pilot program. That’s a foundational customer relationship.
The BofA upgrade is backed by the $1.8B, 7-year AI infrastructure commitment that should start contributing $20-$25 million per quarter from Q4, validating Akamai’s shift from legacy delivery to AI and edge inference infrastructure. Growth is already roughly 40% year over year in Cloud Infrastructure Services, and BofA expects overall revenue growth to accelerate to 11.4% in 2027 with EPS rising to $9.03 by 2028.
The Real Transition Nobody Fully Priced
The deal is the centerpiece of a quarter in which Akamai’s cloud infrastructure services revenue grew 40% year over year to $95 million, while its legacy content delivery business declined 7%. Two businesses moving in opposite directions. The market is finally starting to weight them differently.
The edge compute angle is worth understanding. Akamai has deployed thousands of Blackwell GPUs across its infrastructure and expanded with the announced AI Grid rollout across its 4,400 edge locations, using Nvidia’s AI Grid reference design. This enables enterprises to run agentic and physical AI with the responsiveness of local compute and the scale of the global web.
Why does the distributed architecture matter? The demand for Anthropic’s AI products has risen sharply, prompting the company to seek increased computing resources from multiple providers. In addition to Akamai, Anthropic has arranged for cloud services from Alphabet’s Google and SpaceX. The compute bottleneck is real and multi-vendor sourcing is not going away.
Bull / Base / Bear
Bull: AI infrastructure wins compound. Cloud Infrastructure Services exits 2026 above $400 million annualized. BofA’s $175 target looks conservative.
Base: Anthropic deal ramps as scheduled, legacy CDN decline stabilizes. Stock trades to $150 range over 12 months.
Bear: The AI infrastructure deal doesn’t scale into follow-on enterprise contracts, leaving Akamai stuck with higher capex and weak free cash flow.
The question nobody is asking: if Anthropic is buying from Akamai, AWS, Google, and SpaceX simultaneously, which alternative AI infrastructure provider gets the next $1.8 billion? That list is short. Akamai is on it.
For informational purposes only.
