The five contrasts
-18.5% diluted share count, 2015 to 2025. Roughly $6.1 billion spent on buybacks since 2015, with the heaviest buying ($800M at ~$79.76 average) in 2025, near the lows. CEO Tom Leighton added 50,000 shares (~$3.61M) in the open market in August 2025, outside any 10b5-1 plan. The 2026 buyback pause is to fund contracted CIS demand, not survival: "Given the strong market demand for CIS, we are temporarily pausing share repurchases to reallocate capital to support our high growth CIS pipeline." (Ed McGowan, Q2 2026 call; second-hand transcript.)
0% coupons on $3.5B of 2026 converts (due 2030 and 2032), part of a convert program that has never exceeded a 1.125% coupon, and every issue has carried a concurrent shareholder defense: buybacks, note hedges, or both. Net debt ~$2.95B at June 30, 2026 against $4.62B of cash and securities; investment grade (Moody's Baa2, S&P BBB+, outlook revised to negative in March 2026, second-hand). The ~$1.7B shown as "current" is the May 2033 Notes reclassified on conditional conversion, not a 12-month maturity. Contractual maturity is May 15, 2033.
$14.4B of contracted multi-year CIS backlog signed in 2026 ($2.8B before Anthropic + $11.6B), on infrastructure the company already owns.
$699M of FY2025 free cash flow. FCF has been positive every year since 2015; the compression is a funded choice, with H1 2026 accrual capex at 25.4% of revenue as the company pre-buys components for capacity that is already sold out.
4,300-plus points of presence. Incremental capex on an owned global footprint, not greenfield campuses.
A decade of shrinking the share count
| Year | Diluted shares (M) | Buybacks ($M) | Avg price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 180.415 | 302.6 | n/a |
| 2018 | 169.188 | 750.0 | $73.54 |
| 2021 * | 165.804 | 522.3 | n/a |
| 2023 | 155.397 | 654.0 | $83.84 |
| 2025 | 147.023 | 800.0 | $79.76 |
| H1 2026 | 151.854 GAAP | 615.7 | ~$123 |
* Second-hand figures. Full 2015-2026 table in the PDF. Four authorizations (2016, 2018, 2021, 2024) totaling $5.9B, consistently spent against; $1.2B remained at Dec 31, 2025.
Financing like an adult
| Issue | Principal | Coupon | Maturity | Defense |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2018 | $1,150M | 0.125% | May 2025 (repaid) | $46.2M buyback at $74.59 |
| Aug 2019 | $1,150M | 0.375% | Sep 2027 | ~$100M buyback at $89.37 |
| Aug 2023 | $1,265M | 1.125% | Feb 2029 | ~$75M buyback at $103.11 |
| May 2025 | $1,725M | 0.250% | May 2033 | $605.8M note hedge |
| May 2026 | $1,750M | 0% | May 2030 | $893.7M hedge / $657.1M warrants |
| May 2026 | $1,750M | 0% | May 2032 | ~$350M buyback at $141.34 |
The $3.5B zero-coupon 2026 raise: gross $3.5B, net note proceeds $3,452.7M, note-hedge cost $893.7M against $657.1M of warrant proceeds (net hedge cost ~$236.6M), proceeds earmarked for accelerated CIS capex. Interest coverage: 25.2x (2015), 18.4x (2025), 11.2x (H1 2026).
Cash machine first
Free cash flow has been positive every year since 2015: $319M (2015), $859M (2021), $834M (2024), $699M (2025), ~$221M in H1 2026. The compression is the buildout being funded, not the machine breaking: H1 2026 accrual capex hit $552.9M as the company pre-bought supply-chain components (including memory) for contracted builds, while all GPU capacity sat sold out.
Capital allocation report card
Linode ($900M, 2022): promised to accelerate ~15% growth to the "~30% vicinity"; delivered 32% (2024), 36% (2025), ~39% (H1 2026), with FY2026 guidance at 50%+. Cumulative CIS revenue ~$818M vs the $900M price, and Project Cirrus is saving "well over $100 million per year" (second-hand). Honest caveat: CIS includes EdgeWorkers and ISV solutions, not standalone Linode. Guardicore ($600M, 2021): guided $30-35M FY2022 revenue, delivered $68M; the line hit $293M in FY2025 (+43%). Noname ($450M, 2024): guided ~$20M FY2024 revenue; actuals unverified, folded into the combined line. The CEO's own record: $1 salary since 2013, nearly 100% of pay at risk, bonus paid entirely in stock, dual clawback policies. Honest gap: no pay metric is tied to CIS growth or contracted backlog.
The NVIDIA relationship, exactly
Seven announcements from April 2024 (RTX 4000 media cloud) through June 2026 (Guardicore on Vera BlueField-4), including the October 2025 Inference Cloud launch "in partnership with NVIDIA" and the March 2026 AI Grid reference design. All seven were issued by Akamai; no NVIDIA-issued press release about Akamai was found, and no NVIDIA revenue commitments exist. The relationship runs one way: Akamai procures NVIDIA GPUs and software (AI Enterprise, NIM, DOCA).
"Inference has become the most compute-intensive phase of AI, demanding real-time reasoning at planetary scale," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, NVIDIA. "Together, NVIDIA and Akamai are moving inference closer to users everywhere, delivering faster, more scalable generative AI and unlocking the next generation of intelligent applications." (Akamai press release, October 28, 2025.)
The March 2026 $200M Blackwell deal is a customer agreement (customer unnamed, not NVIDIA) under which Akamai deploys NVIDIA GPUs. It is not an NVIDIA commitment.
The $14.4B contracted backlog
$200M (4 years, Feb/Mar 2026, unnamed tech company, Blackwell cluster) + $1.8B (7 years, May 2026, frontier-model provider) + >$600M (4 years, Aug 2026, robotics) + $11.6B (7 years, Sep 24, 2026, Anthropic) = $14.4B verified ($2.8B company total before Anthropic, which includes smaller commitments beyond the named deals).
Anthropic terms: $11.6B over seven years, expandable by ~$9B toward ~$20B; explicitly for CPU workloads; ~$5.5B of related capex (+$1.7B in 2026 for supply-chain components including memory); no 2026 revenue impact. Warrant: 7.7M common shares as-converted (~5%), $111.33 exercise, ~2% vesting on the announced commitment and ~1% per additional $3B. MSA signed May 5, 2026; Project Plans 2 and 3 signed Sep 18, 2026.
"Anthropic is advancing the AI revolution and we are thrilled they chose Akamai's capabilities for building and operating AI infrastructure at scale," said Dr. Tom Leighton, co-founder and CEO, Akamai. (September 24, 2026.)
Honest terms: no take-or-pay or minimum-commitment language was found in public disclosures for these contracts. Anthropic's payments are conditional on delivery and service availability; a material outage can end an affected project plan. Full agreement text is pending the Q3 10-Q. "GPU demand remains exceptionally strong. As a result, all of our GPU capacity is completely sold out." (Ed McGowan, Q2 2026 call.)
The neo-cloud contrast
| Company | Buildout debt | Equity since 2023 | Share-count story | Backlog |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CoreWeave | ~$31.6B | IPO $1.46B; 35M-share ATM | Converts + ATM add | $104B, 98% take-or-pay |
| Nebius | ~$12B converts in ~14 months | $700M placement | ~199M to ~252M | $40B+ claimed * |
| Crusoe | ~$9.4B non-recourse project debt | Series E/F $5.3B | Private | $140B+ claimed * |
| IREN | ~$7.59B (~31x EBITDA) | $4.74B ordinary shares | +52.7% YoY | Microsoft $9.7B, 20% prepaid |
| Cipher | ~$1.25B converts | ~$339M ATM | +59% since 2022 | AWS $5.5B 15-yr |
| Hut 8 | $7.5B non-recourse IG notes | ATM $500M/$1B | ~124M * | Fluidstack $7B 15-yr |
* Second-hand. Full detail in the PDF. Four ways GPUs get financed: CoreWeave borrows against GPUs; Nebius borrows against equity via converts; IREN gets customers to prepay; Cipher and Hut 8 make tenants bring the GPUs. Akamai's fifth way: contracted backlog on infrastructure it already owns, funded from operating cash flow. Google is the systemic backstop of the neo-cloud cycle (backstopping Fluidstack leases to Cipher and Hut 8). Dilution is the universal exhaust; Akamai's share count moves the other way.
Why the story is different
Contracted backlog on owned infrastructure. Funded from operating cash flow of a $4.2B base. Incremental capex on existing PoPs, not greenfield. CPU distributed inference, not the GPU training arms race. Investment grade, not debt-fueled. Buybacks, not dilution.
Honest risks
Anthropic concentration (~2.75x FY2025 revenue in one customer). Execution on the largest buildout in company history (~$5.5B capex, payments conditional on delivery). Legacy Delivery still eroding ($1.669B in 2022 to $1.257B in 2025). S&P outlook negative (second-hand). ~5% warrant dilution at $111.33. Succession at a founder-led company, with no CIS metric in the pay formula.