Anthropic is committing $11.6 billion over seven years to Akamai’s cloud infrastructure, a deal that highlights the extraordinary scale of computing resources now being secured by leading AI laboratories and points to a less visible constraint in the industry’s expansion: demand for conventional CPUs.

The agreement, announced by Akamai on Thursday, is more than six times the size of the $1.8 billion arrangement between the companies reported in May. It is also the largest contract in Akamai’s history.

The scale of the commitment illustrates how aggressively Anthropic is building computing capacity as it develops and deploys sophisticated AI systems. While much of the industry’s attention has focused on the enormous demand for Nvidia GPUs and other specialized AI accelerators, Anthropic’s agreement with Akamai highlights the growing importance of general-purpose processors as AI agents perform more tasks beyond simply generating text or images.

The deal is not unconditional. According to an Akamai securities filing, the agreement depends on the company satisfying specified delivery and service-availability requirements, and either party can terminate the arrangement under certain circumstances.

The headline $11.6 billion figure represents a long-term commitment rather than revenue that Akamai will immediately recognize. Akamai expects to generate between $150 million and $300 million from the agreement in 2027, beginning in the second half of the year. Revenue is expected to reach an annualized pace of roughly $1.7 billion by the end of 2028.

For Akamai, the contract represents a major expansion opportunity but also requires a substantial upfront investment.

The company expects to spend about $5.5 billion to build the capacity required for Anthropic. It is also adding about $1.7 billion to its 2026 capital expenditure to secure components, including memory, ahead of demand. That creates a striking financial equation: Akamai is effectively committing billions of dollars of its own capital to prepare infrastructure for a customer whose payments will arrive over several years.

The Akamai agreement is the latest example of Anthropic securing computing capacity from multiple infrastructure providers as it scales its AI operations.

Anthropic has previously entered major arrangements involving Amazon, Google, Microsoft and AMD. Those relationships combine access to chips or cloud infrastructure with investments in Anthropic, creating complex financial ties between AI developers and the companies supplying the computing power required to train and operate their models.

The Akamai transaction introduces another variation.

Instead of Akamai taking an equity position in Anthropic, Anthropic receives a warrant that could eventually give it a stake in Akamai.

Under the agreement, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for nonvoting preferred stock convertible into 7.7 million common shares, equivalent to as much as about 5% of Akamai’s outstanding shares at a price of $111.33 per share. About 2% is expected to vest when Anthropic makes its first payment under the agreement. Additional portions are linked to Anthropic’s future spending.

For every additional $3 billion Anthropic commits to Akamai’s cloud services, roughly another 1% of Akamai becomes available to Anthropic. If all the additional spending milestones are reached, the overall arrangement could expand by as much as $9 billion, taking the potential value of the cloud relationship to about $20 billion.

The structure effectively links Anthropic’s growing computing requirements with an increasing potential ownership interest in its infrastructure supplier.

It is also the first time Akamai has attached a warrant to a cloud agreement.

A Different Kind of AI Infrastructure Deal

The arrangement reverses a structure that has become increasingly common across the AI industry. Typically, infrastructure companies invest in the AI laboratories that become their customers. Chipmakers and cloud providers have provided capital to AI developers while simultaneously securing demand for their hardware and computing services.

The Akamai agreement works in the opposite direction. Anthropic, the customer, receives the potential equity upside in the infrastructure provider, resulting in an unusual alignment of interests.

Anthropic has an incentive to increase its use of Akamai’s infrastructure because greater spending can unlock additional equity. Akamai, meanwhile, receives a large multiyear commitment that can help justify the capital expenditure required to build the necessary capacity.

AMD used a related structure with OpenAI last year, linking warrants to milestones for chip purchases.

The growing prevalence of these arrangements illustrates how difficult it has become to separate the financing of AI companies from the economics of the infrastructure supporting them.

The AI laboratory needs enormous amounts of computing capacity. Infrastructure providers need sufficiently large and predictable customers to justify building that capacity. Equity-linked contracts can tie the two sides together more closely than conventional supplier agreements.

CPUs Emerge As An Overlooked Bottleneck

The Akamai deal is notable for another reason. The agreement is centered on cloud infrastructure and highlights demand for CPUs, rather than focusing exclusively on the GPUs that have dominated the AI infrastructure narrative.

CPUs are general-purpose processors used for a wide range of computing tasks, including running code and managing web activity. As AI agents become capable of carrying out longer and more complicated sequences of tasks, demand for conventional computing resources can increase alongside demand for specialized AI accelerators.

Akamai did not disclose precisely how Anthropic plans to use the CPUs covered by the agreement. Still, the transaction points to an important feature of the AI buildout. Training and running advanced models requires much more than accelerators.

Data must be processed and moved. Applications need to execute code. Agents need to interact with websites and software. Systems need storage, networking, and conventional compute resources to coordinate the enormous volumes of work generated by AI applications.

As agentic AI becomes more widely deployed, those supporting workloads could become a substantial infrastructure market of their own. That gives Akamai an opportunity to participate in AI infrastructure without competing directly with the companies supplying the most prominent training accelerators.

The Economics Are Becoming Harder to Ignore

The agreement also illustrates the enormous capital requirements created by the AI boom. Akamai expects to spend roughly $5.5 billion building capacity for a contract that will generate an estimated $150 million to $300 million of revenue in 2027 and an annualized $1.7 billion by the end of 2028.

The gap between upfront investment and eventual revenue demonstrates why AI infrastructure providers increasingly need long-term commitments from large customers before they can justify massive capacity expansions.

It also raises questions about utilization.

Analysts have noted that if demand from AI laboratories continues expanding at the pace assumed in these contracts, the infrastructure investments could generate substantial recurring revenue for providers such as Akamai. If AI demand grows more slowly, however, infrastructure companies could find themselves carrying large capital commitments for capacity that is not fully utilized. That issue is becoming more significant as multiple cloud providers, chipmakers and data-center operators simultaneously expand capacity in anticipation of AI demand.

Anthropic, for its part, is effectively locking in access to infrastructure years ahead of time. That can provide greater certainty over capacity as competition for computing resources intensifies, but it also creates long-term financial obligations.

The arrangement therefore says as much about the economics of the AI infrastructure race as it does about Anthropic’s own growth.

Akamai’s stock rose as much as 17% in after-hours trading on Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal, indicating that investors viewed the agreement as a significant commercial opportunity.

The market response is understandable given the size of the contract relative to Akamai’s existing business. The company now has a large customer commitment that can support the expansion of its cloud infrastructure while potentially increasing the scale of its AI-related operations.

But the deal also places greater importance on execution. Akamai must spend billions of dollars to deliver the capacity, meet service requirements, and ultimately convert Anthropic’s commitments into recurring revenue.

The warrant adds another layer to the arrangement. If Anthropic’s spending increases and additional portions vest, the company could become a meaningful shareholder in Akamai, aligning its financial interests with the success of the infrastructure provider. That structure is unusual enough to signal how quickly traditional relationships between technology suppliers and their customers are changing.

Gold was on course for a weekly decline on Friday as a sharp rise in US Treasury yields and growing expectations of further Federal Reserve rate increases reduced the appeal of an asset that does not generate interest income.

Spot gold rose 0.3% to $4,291.06 an ounce by 0844 GMT, but remained about 2% lower for the week. US gold futures gained 0.7% to $4,326.60.

The weekly decline comes as the bond market has undergone a sharp repricing. The US 10-year Treasury yield has moved to near two-decade highs, while the 30-year yield reached its highest level since 2004. Rising yields increase the opportunity cost of holding gold because investors can earn higher returns from government securities while retaining exposure to an asset considered relatively low risk.

“Ongoing inflationary pressures are driving those rate hike fears higher, which probably will stay until there’s a resolution to the issues around the Strait of Hormuz and the wider Middle East region,” said Nitesh Shah, commodity strategist at WisdomTree.

The relationship between gold, oil and interest rates has become cordial and toxic in the current market. Higher oil prices threaten to keep inflation elevated, which increases pressure on the Fed to maintain or further tighten monetary policy. Higher interest rates then strengthen the incentive to hold yield-bearing assets, creating a headwind for bullion.

Fed Tightening Changes The Gold Equation

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points last week, its first increase in three years, and signaled that additional increases could follow. Markets are now pricing a roughly 71% probability of another rate increase in October and a 95% probability of a December hike, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

That represents a significant shift in expectations for an asset class that has benefited from expectations of lower interest rates and persistent concerns about inflation, currency debasement, and geopolitical risk.

Gold’s traditional role as an inflation hedge has not disappeared, but the current environment illustrates why inflation alone does not determine its direction. If inflation rises at the same time as interest rates remain low or negative in real terms, gold can become more attractive. If inflation rises while central banks respond aggressively with higher rates, the resulting increase in real and nominal yields can weigh on bullion.

That tension is now playing out in the market.

The latest US economic data have reinforced expectations that the economy remains sufficiently resilient for the Fed to continue tightening. New York Fed President John Williams said Thursday that it was reasonable to expect the central bank could need to raise rates again before the end of the year.

The result is a more difficult backdrop for gold, even though the same inflation pressures supporting higher rates are also creating reasons for investors to maintain exposure to hard assets.

Middle East Remains The Key Variable

The geopolitical situation is adding another layer of uncertainty. US and Iranian negotiators in New York are exploring a potential agreement under which Tehran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz while Washington would lift its economic blockade of Iran, according to sources close to the talks.

Any credible progress toward reopening the waterway could put downward pressure on oil prices and, in turn, reduce some of the inflation premium embedded in global markets.

But that would have mixed implications for gold.

Analysts have explained that lower oil prices could reduce inflation expectations and diminish the need for aggressive monetary tightening, potentially supporting bullion through lower yields. At the same time, a successful diplomatic resolution would reduce one of the major sources of geopolitical demand for safe-haven assets.

The market has already demonstrated how quickly expectations can change. Gold and equities recovered from their session lows after reports that Washington and Tehran were exploring a phased path out of the conflict.

Oil, however, remains elevated. Brent crude rose more than 3% to nearly $107 a barrel after a Houthi missile attack on Saudi Arabia revived concerns about further supply disruptions.

“This just reinforces the view that we’re dealing with one major market catalyst right now,” said Bill Northey, senior investment director at U.S. Bank Wealth Management. “It’s really all about oil and inflation and the effect on interest rates, and then the interest rate cascading across the capital markets.”

That chain is now defining the broader investment environment: geopolitical developments affect oil, oil affects inflation expectations, inflation influences Fed policy, and interest-rate expectations then move bonds, currencies, equities and precious metals.

Gold Still Has Structural Support

The current decline does not necessarily eliminate the longer-term arguments supporting gold. Physical demand in India increased modestly this week as lower prices attracted buyers ahead of the country’s festive season. That provides some support to the market at a time when financial investors are reducing exposure.

Central-bank demand is another structural source of support. Gold has been used by central banks as a reserve asset, especially as governments seek to diversify away from concentrated exposure to major currencies.

Nikos Tzabouras, senior market analyst at Jefferies-owned Tradu.com, said lingering concerns over government deficits could revive demand for hard assets.

“Lingering deficit fears could revive the debasement trend that drives investors toward hard assets like gold,” he said. “Alongside persistent central bank demand, the precious metal has a credible case for a strong fourth-quarter recovery, should the macro winds begin to shift.”

The argument is that gold’s investment case does not depend exclusively on interest rates. Concerns over government debt, fiscal sustainability, currency purchasing power and geopolitical instability can all influence demand.

That has yielded a potential counterweight to the pressure from higher Treasury yields.

The immediate problem is that those longer-term factors are competing with a powerful short-term force: the repricing of US monetary policy.

The S&P 500 Took A Smack

The pressure on gold is part of a broader adjustment across financial markets. The S&P 500 ended Thursday almost unchanged, falling 0.02% to 7,704.13. The Nasdaq gained 0.01% to 26,939.37, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.31% to 51,349.98.

Eight of the 11 S&P 500 sectors declined, led by materials, which fell 1.18%, and consumer staples, which lost 0.96%. The market’s breadth was weak. Declining stocks outnumbered advancing shares in the S&P 500 by about 1.9 to 1. The index recorded 14 new highs and 41 new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 53 new highs and 238 new lows. That indicates that the headline index performance is masking considerable dispersion underneath the surface.

The resilience of the major indexes has been supported in part by technology and AI-related stocks. Microsoft fell 0.5%, and Broadcom lost 1.3%, while Advanced Micro Devices rose 2.4%. Meta Platforms gained 4.5% following the launch of a small handheld device linked to its AI assistant.

Oracle fell 3.5% after a report that it had sent a “force majeure” notice to a New Mexico data center. Blue Owl, the project’s developer, also fell sharply.

The contrast between strong AI-related earnings expectations and rising bond yields is getting thin. Higher Treasury yields raise the discount rate used to value future corporate earnings, making highly valued growth stocks more sensitive to changes in interest rates.

The S&P 500 was trading at just under 19 times expected earnings this week, its lowest valuation since 2023, according to LSEG data. Much of the recent increase in earnings expectations has been driven by AI-related companies. That means the equity market is simultaneously benefiting from expectations of strong AI-driven earnings and facing a higher cost of capital.

Other Precious Metals Remain Under Pressure

Gold was not alone in facing a difficult week. Spot silver rose 1.1% on Friday to $64.62 an ounce, while platinum gained 0.6% to $1,758.54. Palladium fell 1.1% to $1,254.73. All three metals were still heading for weekly losses.

The divergent daily moves do little to change the broader picture. Higher yields and tighter monetary expectations have created a challenging environment across precious metals, even as physical and industrial demand provide support for individual markets.

For gold, analysts say the critical variable remains the direction of real yields and expectations for the Federal Reserve. If oil remains above $100 and inflation expectations continue rising, the Fed may face pressure to maintain its tightening cycle, increasing the opportunity cost of holding bullion.

A meaningful decline in oil prices, evidence of softer inflation, or a deterioration in US economic activity could have the opposite effect by reducing expectations for additional rate hikes and lowering Treasury yields.

Saudi Arabia’s diversion of crude exports through the Strait of Hormuz is pushing ship-to-ship transfer operations in the Gulf of Oman to their limits, tightening the availability of supertankers and driving shipping costs sharply higher as Middle Eastern producers seek alternative routes following the disruption of Red Sea exports.

Saudi Aramco has sold more than 60 million barrels of crude for ship-to-ship transfers off Sohar, Oman, this month and next, according to trade sources and analysts cited by Reuters. The surge follows the September 13 attack on Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, which halted crude exports from the Red Sea port of Yanbu.

Saudi crude exports through Hormuz are expected to rise to about 3.6 million barrels per day in September, from roughly 900,000 bpd in August, according to Kpler data. That represents an increase of almost 3 million bpd and is creating a substantial additional requirement for very large crude carriers, or VLCCs.

Kpler analyst Panagiotis Krontiras estimated that the additional Saudi volumes alone would require between 36 and 40 VLCCs, with each vessel capable of carrying about 2 million barrels of crude.

The pressure on shipping capacity is already evident in freight markets. The daily time-charter rate for a VLCC transporting Middle Eastern crude to China reached a record $1.27 million on Monday, according to LSEG data.

Anoop Singh, head of global shipping research at commodity broker Oil Brokerage, said the number of additional VLCCs needed to move the same volume of oil had risen to 40 in September from 24 in August.

“That 2 million bpd uplift in Saudi flows will generate additional demand for 15 VLCCs for shuttle runs alone,” Singh said in a September 23 note.

He added that another 20 VLCCs were effectively trapped in the Mediterranean while awaiting the restoration of Yanbu operations.

The disruption shows that a relatively localized infrastructure attack can create wider bottlenecks across the global oil transportation system. Saudi Arabia has been able to maintain crude exports by redirecting barrels through Hormuz, but the alternative route requires additional vessels and, in many cases, ship-to-ship transfers before the cargo can continue toward Asian refineries.

Hormuz Congestion Spreads Across Gulf Oil Trade

The pressure is not coming from Saudi Arabia alone. Increasing exports from other Gulf producers, including Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, are also relying on ship-to-ship transfers outside Hormuz, adding to demand for tugboats, crews and other services required to move crude between vessels.

Before the war, most crude cargoes from Gulf producers other than Iran were typically loaded directly onto vessels bound for their final destinations. The disruption has changed that pattern, forcing more cargoes into a transfer system that has limited capacity.

“VLCC STS operations have struggled to keep pace,” Vortexa analysts said in a September 21 note.

The company estimated that ship-to-ship transfers involving crude loaded on VLCCs from ports west of Hormuz have remained at around 6 million bpd since the end of August, equivalent to roughly three VLCC pairs beginning STS operations each day.

Congestion is now extending the amount of time required to complete transfers.

“Congestion is getting worse near the Strait of Hormuz due to long STS queues,” Vortexa analyst Emma Li said, adding that an STS operation now requires nearly 10 days, compared with five to seven days previously.

The longer turnaround times effectively remove vessels from the available tanker fleet for extended periods. That means even if sufficient crude is available, producers and buyers may struggle to find ships capable of moving it efficiently.

Chinese buyers are already asking sellers about alternative transfer locations, including waters off India’s west coast and Malaysia, Li said. Some are also seeking direct deliveries to refineries to avoid the increasingly congested STS network around Hormuz.

One example is the Bahri-operated VLCC Gold Shine, which loaded about 2 million barrels of Saudi crude at Ras Tanura earlier this week and was headed toward Quanzhou in eastern China, according to Kpler and LSEG data. Sinochem and Fujian Refining, which is partly owned by Saudi Aramco, operate refineries in the area.

The shift is also being felt farther east. South Korean refiner S-Oil, majority-owned by Aramco, is sending two VLCCs to conduct ship-to-ship transfers off Vadinar on India’s west coast, according to a trader involved in the Middle Eastern crude market.

There has also been increased crude-transfer activity around Malaysia’s Linggi transshipment hub, according to a tanker owner tracking movements through the Malacca Strait.

A Singapore-based shipbroker said the economics of moving oil are changing as congestion builds. In some circumstances, it may now be cheaper for a VLCC to discharge crude into smaller vessels, which can then transport it toward North Asia, rather than keeping the supertanker tied up for a longer direct voyage.

The immediate consequence is higher transportation costs, but the broader implications extend into the oil market. Longer voyages, higher tanker rates, and congestion increase the delivered cost of crude for Asian refiners. If the disruption persists, buyers may compete for both available cargoes and shipping capacity.

The episode also reveals the importance of Saudi Arabia’s alternative export infrastructure. The East-West Pipeline was designed to provide the kingdom with a route that reduces its dependence on Hormuz for exports from the Red Sea. With Yanbu disrupted, more Saudi barrels are being forced back through the strategically important strait, adding pressure to a maritime chokepoint already handling substantial volumes of Gulf crude.

While the oil itself is currently continuing to move, the cost and complexity of moving it are rising rapidly. The record VLCC rates and growing STS queues show that shipping capacity has become an important constraint in the Middle East oil trade. If Yanbu remains unavailable for an extended period, the strain on tankers and transfer infrastructure could intensify further.