Akamai Technologies used its third quarter earnings call to reset its growth story around AI infrastructure. Chief executive Tom Leighton said total revenue could surpass 7 billion dollars in 2028 as cloud infrastructure services become a larger share of the mix, and that the segment could generate 1.1 billion to 1.3 billion dollars in 2027, with total company revenue growth of 17 to 22 percent that year.
The engine is a recently signed 11.6 billion dollar, seven year contract with Anthropic for CPU based workloads. Leighton said the deal takes multiyear cloud infrastructure commitments signed this year to more than 14 billion dollars, including an earlier Anthropic agreement, two large deals with unnamed AI companies and numerous enterprise contracts. Two of the first three large deals are already generating revenue and the third is expected to start in the fourth quarter. Management put revenue at about 22 million dollars per megawatt of contracted power on the large long term contracts, calling that figure a floor.
Third quarter revenue was 1.122 billion dollars, up 6 percent year on year. Cloud infrastructure revenue was 109 million dollars, up 34 percent and the fastest growing segment, while security revenue rose 9 percent to 622 million dollars. Non-GAAP earnings were 1.77 dollars per share. The non-GAAP operating margin fell six points to 25 percent and adjusted EBITDA fell 5 percent to 435 million dollars, which management attributed to colocation costs booked ahead of revenue on the large buildouts, with margins expected back above 30 percent once the contracts ramp.
The near term cost is visible. Capital spending was 464 million dollars in the third quarter and is expected to jump to between 2.445 billion and 2.645 billion dollars in the fourth, including 1.7 billion dollars for the Anthropic contract, for which finance chief Ed McGowan said about 70 percent of the required hardware, memory and components has been secured and all colocation and power contracted. Modest supply chain and third party data center delays will push about 30 million dollars of revenue from the fourth quarter into 2027, and full year 2026 revenue guidance was trimmed to 4.44 billion to 4.465 billion dollars. The guidance disclosure is separate from Monday’s convertible notes announcement, which this site covered as a financing filing on November 9; together they describe a company borrowing against a contracted AI backlog.