Akamai Technologies has been selected as the strategy cloud computing provider for one of the "world's largest technology companies."

Akamai said the contract, with an unnamed company, is worth $100 million and is a "multi-year strategic usage agreement." The customer will use Akamai's full-stack cloud computing offering.

“Technology platforms with a massive global presence require sophisticated and reliable cloud services,” said Akamai COO and GM of its cloud technology group, Adam Karon. “Akamai provides the scale this customer requires along with ultra-low latency performance to help ensure that every user has the best experience possible no matter where they are in the world.”

Akamai will deploy managed Kubernetes clusters in secured virtual private cloud environments for the customer, as well as offer load-balance user traffic, and apply integrated application and network security.

Revealing more details in the company's earnings call, Leighton said that the customer has already been using "substantial cloud infrastructure services for a variety of media applications" and added: "They have some special needs in Scandinavia and we are building out a data center there for them to handle substantial applications for them throughout Europe."

This week has also seen Akamai releasing its Q4 2024 financial results.

The company had a revenue of $1.02 billion for the quarter, up three percent year-over-year (YoY), of which it said 69 percent came from security and compute. Full-year revenue was $3.991bn, up five percent YoY, of which security and compute was 67 percent, growing 18 percent YoY.

Specifically on the compute side, revenue for Q4 was $167 million, up 24 percent YoY, and for the whole of 2024 was $630 million, up 25 percent YoY. Compute was the fastest growing segment of Akamai's offerings, though remains its smallest, with security its primary source of revenue followed by content delivery. According to CEO Tom Leighton, this was the first year that security was Akamai's primary offering.

Leighton added: "Our cloud infrastructure services primarily consists of the compute and storage solutions that we've developed based on Linode." The company acquired Linode in 2022 for $900m, representing its entrance into the cloud business. In February 2023, it launched its "Connected Cloud" platform.

Akamai offers "core" cloud services which include IaaS, FaaS, and PaaS; as well as "Edge" services, which is just FaaS and PaaS. The former is currently live in 36 cities and 41 locations, while the latter is live in more than 700 cities and 4,300 locations. Those locations will also see a managed container service announced in the coming weeks.

Speaking further on its cloud business, Leighton said: "We made a lot of progress last year, achieving what we set out to do in revenue growth, signing new enterprise customers, infrastructure deployment, product development, partner ecosystem expansion, and migrating our own applications from hyperscalers to the Akamai cloud.

"We continue to sign compute customers at a rapid pace in Q4, including two financial software companies in the US, two of the largest retailers in the US, a cybersecurity provider in Europe, an enterprise software company in Asia, one of the largest banks in Southeast Asia, and an intelligent transportation system provider in Latin America."

It is unclear if any of these companies are the same as the recently shared contract with a large technology firm.

Leighton noted that by moving some of their products from hyperscalers to their own cloud platform, Akamai has saved more than $100 million per year.

The company expects to grow its cloud segment by 15 percent in 2025.

Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $429m, up one percent, and for the year was $1.682bn, up five percent. GAAP net income per diluted share was $0.91, down 12 percent YoY and down nine percent when adjusted for foreign exchange.

The company also said it expects capex for the next fiscal year to be around 19 percent of its total revenue an increase of two percent from the year prior. Revenue expectations are between $4bn and $4.2bn, meaning capex could be as much as $798 million.

Ed McGowan, CFO of Akamai, said that the company expects to spend 1 percent of revenue to accommodate increased traffic as a result of the company's 2024 Edgio acquisition, and another one percent for "geo-specific infrastructure builds to support the recently signed $100 million cloud infrastructure services contract." McGowan added that Q1 will see significantly higher expenditures compared to the rest of the year.

"Akamai delivered a solid fourth quarter, demonstrating robust profitability and sustained momentum across our security and cloud computing solutions," said Leighton, Akamai's CO. "We are encouraged by our latest results and the market adoption of our newest product innovations. As we head into 2025, our focus on delivering sustainable profitability across all areas of our business, coupled with our ongoing transformation into a leading cybersecurity and cloud solutions provider, positions us for long-term success."

As part of the company's transition to focus on cloud and security offerings, Akamai announced in January that it was ceasing its CDN services in China. Services in the country will cease on June 30, 2026, the company said in a letter to customers. After this point, any remaining content requests will be automatically served from neighboring countries.

Despite this, the company is still expanding its CDN segment, having acquired customer contracts from bankrupt CDN firm Edgio in 2024, and those of Lumen and StackPath after they both quit the CDN business in 2023.