Akamai surges on big LLM deal as Cloudflare dims

"These leaders in AI have chosen Akamai because their AI workloads need the scale, performance and reliability that our cloud platform provides,"

"Akamai, which has 4,300 locations in 700 cities across 130 countries, won the deal against stiff competition from hyperscalers and neoclouds. He said Akamai's ability to manage and scale complex distributed systems, as well as its low latency, tipped the scales in its favor."

"We've been able to get the supply chain ready. We anticipate receiving all the goods that we need to deliver this services over the next seven years within the next 12 months,"

"McGowan said it is a consumption-based contract over seven years, so as soon as Akamai ramps the necessary capacity, it will start taking revenue, which he expects to begin happeni"

Cloudflare announced a staff reduction of about a fifth to realign around AI. Akamai announced a seven-year, $1.8 billion deal with a leading LLM provider identified as Anthropic. Akamai said the deal is the largest in its history and followed another $200 million deal with an unidentified frontier-model developer. Akamai attributed the win to scale, performance, and reliability for AI workloads, along with managing and scaling complex distributed systems and low latency. Akamai operates 4,300 locations in 700 cities across 130 countries. Asked about capex increases due to datacenter supply constraints, Akamai said supply chain readiness is in place, goods are expected within 12 months, and contract mechanisms address potential price changes and delays. The contract is consumption-based, with revenue expected to begin as capacity ramps.

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