Anthropic has reportedly signed a $1.8 billion cloud infrastructure contract with Akamai, adding another major compute agreement as the artificial intelligence company expands capacity for its Claude models and competes more directly with OpenAI.
The contract will run for seven years, Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. Akamai disclosed the agreement during its first-quarter 2026 earnings call but did not name the customer. Chief Executive Frank Thomson Leighton described it as the largest customer deal in Akamai’s history.
Leighton said the agreement involved a “leading frontier model company” and covered cloud infrastructure services. He also said the deal followed a separate $200 million cloud infrastructure contract announced in February with another major U.S. technology company working in AI.
The reported Akamai agreement comes as Anthropic signs several large compute deals to meet demand for Claude, its AI assistant and enterprise tools. The company has also reached capacity agreements with Amazon Web Services, Google, CoreWeave, and SpaceXAI-linked infrastructure.
Akamai Contract Expands Anthropic’s Compute Base
The hardware involved in the Akamai contract has not been disclosed. Akamai previously said its $200 million cloud infrastructure agreement involved Nvidia Blackwell RTX Pro 6000 Server Edition clusters, which are suited for smaller distributed deployments.
Akamai has been expanding its AI infrastructure strategy through a planned rollout of Nvidia hardware across its global network. The company has described an “AI Grid” project across 4,400 edge locations, using Nvidia’s reference design to support agentic AI and physical AI workloads closer to end users.
For Anthropic, the reported Akamai agreement adds distributed compute capacity to a growing list of infrastructure sources. The company recently agreed to use all available capacity at SpaceXAI’s Colossus 1 data center, which reportedly includes more than 220,000 Nvidia GPUs.
Akamai shares rose 27% after the company disclosed the cloud infrastructure contract. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $1.074 billion, up 6% from a year earlier. Its Cloud Infrastructure Services business generated $95 million, up 40% year over year.
Anthropic and OpenAI Valuation Race Tightens
The cloud deal comes as Anthropic is reportedly seeking a new private funding round at a valuation above $900 billion. Reports have said the company is discussing a $50 billion raise that could value it between $900 billion and $1 trillion.
If completed at those levels, Anthropic could surpass OpenAI’s reported $852 billion valuation from its March 2026 funding round. Secondary market estimates have also placed Anthropic’s implied value near or above $1 trillion, though private market pricing can vary widely.
Anthropic’s valuation growth has been rapid. According to reports, the company was valued at $61.5 billion in March 2025, $183 billion in September 2025, and $380 billion in February 2026. A $900 billion valuation would mark another sharp increase within months.
Revenue growth has become a major part of the Anthropic-OpenAI comparison. Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate has reportedly climbed to $30 billion to $45 billion, while OpenAI’s run rate has been estimated at $25 billion.
Anthropic’s enterprise products, including Claude Code and Cowork, have been credited with driving rapid business adoption. OpenAI has been refocusing on enterprise services through new corporate sales efforts as competition for business customers grows.
EU Scrutiny Adds Regulatory Dimension
Anthropic and OpenAI are also drawing attention from European regulators. The European Commission has been discussing access to new AI models as the European Union prepares to enforce general-purpose AI obligations under the AI Act starting August 2, 2026.
OpenAI has offered regulators access to its newest AI model, which the Commission has treated as a constructive step toward compliance with EU rules. Discussions with Anthropic have taken place, but formal talks over direct access to specific models have not yet begun.
Recent EU attention has also focused on Anthropic’s unreleased Mythos model, which has raised cybersecurity questions because of its reported ability to identify IT vulnerabilities. EU officials are exploring whether such tools could help test banks and companies for cyber resilience.
Anthropic has committed to the EU’s General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, which requires AI developers to assess and reduce systemic risks. The company’s regulatory posture will remain important as it expands across enterprise, cloud and cybersecurity markets.
