Akamai Technologies
Akamai powers and protects life online by providing distributed cloud computing, cybersecurity, and content-delivery services. Its stated vision is a safer and more connected world, with infrastructure extending from core data centers to the edge.
At a Glance
- Large global enterprises
- Financial services and banking
- Retail and ecommerce
- Media, video streaming, and gaming
- +6 more
AI Tools by Akamai Technologies
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Akamai Agent Sandbox
Serverless Sandbox for AI Agents
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Latest News
Akamai launched Akamai Inference and Akamai Agent Sandbox, beta managed services for model serving and isolated AI-agent execution.
Akamai announced a $11.6 billion, seven-year Akamai Cloud commitment with Anthropic, with potential expansion to about $20 billion and an associated warrant.
Akamai completed its acquisition of LayerX, bringing browser-based AI usage control and secure enterprise-browser capabilities into Akamai's Zero Trust portfolio.
Akamai announced its intent to acquire LayerX for approximately $205 million, with LayerX co-founders and employees joining Akamai's Zero Trust organization.
Products & Services
Distributed cloud computing platform spanning core and edge infrastructure, including compute, storage, networking, databases, Kubernetes, and security.
Distributed generative-AI platform using NVIDIA infrastructure to provide low-latency inference close to users and devices, with orchestration between edge and core.
Beta managed model-serving service with OpenAI-compatible APIs, serverless pay-per-use inference and dedicated deployments, open-weight models, embeddings, orchestration, execution, and authentication.
Beta execution environment for AI agents and agent-generated code. It runs on Akamai Functions, uses nested WebAssembly isolation through the Spin SDK, denies outbound access by default, and limits compute, memory, connections, and system capabilities.
Market Position
Akamai differentiates itself from hyperscalers and single-purpose CDNs by combining one of the world's most distributed edge networks with full-stack cloud computing and enterprise security. It competes with cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, content-delivery and edge providers such as Cloudflare and Fastly, and cybersecurity vendors such as F5, Imperva, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, and Netskope; its positioning emphasizes low-latency core-to-edge distribution, integrated security, and enterprise-scale resilience.
Leadership
Founders
F. Thomson (Tom) Leighton
MIT professor of applied mathematics and head of the Algorithms Group at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science; he co-developed Akamai's distributed content-routing algorithms and became CEO in 2013.
Daniel M. (Danny) Lewin
Technion computer-science and mathematics graduate who came to MIT in 1996 to work with Leighton; he made key advances in techniques for improving Internet performance and served as Akamai's co-founder and CTO.
Preetish Nijhawan
MIT Sloan student who joined Leighton and Lewin in entering the 1997 MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition and the early founding team.
Jonathan Seelig
MIT Sloan student who joined the founding team when Akamai was incorporated in August 1998.
Randall Kaplan
Business entrepreneur who joined Leighton, Lewin, and Nijhawan as part of the founding team when Akamai was incorporated in August 1998.
Executive Team
Dr. Tom Leighton
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder
MIT applied-mathematics professor and former head of MIT's Algorithms Group; co-founded Akamai and served as chief scientist before becoming CEO in 2013.
Adam Karon
Chief Operating Officer and General Manager, Cloud Technology Group
Akamai executive leading operations and the cloud technology business, including the company's distributed cloud and AI infrastructure strategy.
Board of Directors
Founding Story
The company began with a challenge from Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee at MIT in 1995: solve the Internet congestion that was making the Web slow. Leighton assembled researchers, and he and Lewin developed mathematical algorithms to route and replicate content across distributed servers; the team commercialized the work through the 1997 MIT $50K competition and incorporated Akamai on August 20, 1998, with an exclusive license to relevant MIT intellectual property.
Business Model
Revenue Model
Enterprise contracts and usage-based services across security, delivery, and cloud computing. Revenue comes from subscriptions and managed services for security and delivery products, cloud infrastructure and compute usage, dedicated infrastructure commitments, and professional/global services; Akamai Inference supports serverless pay-per-use or dedicated deployments.
Target Markets
- Large global enterprises
- Financial services and banking
- Retail and ecommerce
- Media, video streaming, and gaming
- Telecommunications
- Healthcare and pharmaceutical
- Secure and accelerate enterprise web applications, APIs, and digital experiences
- Global video streaming, gaming, ecommerce, financial services, and media delivery
- DDoS, bot, ransomware, API, application, and zero-trust protection
- Distributed application deployment and cloud modernization
- Low-latency generative AI inference, agentic applications, fraud detection, and real-time decisioning
- Safe execution of code written by AI agents and AI application generators
- Anthropic
- Scalefusion
- Miele
- ITV