Akamai Technologies, Inc. AKAM is benefiting from solid demand in the Cloud Infrastructure Services (CIS) segment. The segment generated $99 million of revenues in the second quarter of 2026, up 39% year over year.
Its CIS business is benefiting primarily from the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. AI adoption is moving beyond model training toward inference and AI-agent applications. These enterprises increasingly need computing resources to ensure low latency. Akamai is positioning its distributed infrastructure to process these workloads closer to end users. Rather than relying on centralized data centers, this approach is boosting responsiveness while reducing latency.
Strong demand for GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) capacity for AI inference and compute-intensive applications is another growth driver. Akamai reported that its existing GPU capacity was completely sold out, prompting the company to expand its infrastructure to accommodate other customers. AKAM expects to invest up to $500 million in additional capital expenditure to support the growing demand.
In fiscal 2026, the company has signed more than $2.8 billion in multi-year CIS commitments, including a more than $600 million, four-year agreement with a U.S. tech company for robotics-related infrastructure. These large, multi-year enterprise contracts will likely ensure long-term sustainable growth in this segment.
Akamai’s global and distributed infrastructure footprint is a major advantage. The company has infrastructure deployed across more than 700 cities in 130 countries. This allows it to combine core cloud capacity with edge computing. The company expects CIS revenues to grow at least 50% in constant currency for full-year 2026.
Other Tech Companies in Cloud Infrastructure Domain
CoreWeave CRWV is emerging as a major player in AI-focused cloud infrastructure. In the second quarter of 2026, the company generated record revenues of $2.6 billion, representing 112% year-over-year growth, while its revenue backlog reached $104 billion. The company is witnessing solid demand for its GPU capacity. Managed inference is becoming an increasingly important growth vertical for CoreWeave as AI moves from experimentation and development to production and inference. In 2026, CRWV expects to generate at least $250 million of managed inference average recurring revenue.
Oracle Corporation's ORCL cloud infrastructure business is experiencing solid momentum, with multi-cloud database services gaining significant traction across enterprise customers. Its end-to-end technology stack, spanning database, applications, and infrastructure, creates unique value for enterprise customers seeking simplified vendor relationships and seamless integration. The company's ability to deliver complete solutions reduces implementation complexity and total cost of ownership, strengthening customer loyalty and increasing wallet share. In the fourth quarter, Oracle’s cloud revenues (SaaS plus IaaS) increased 47% in USD and 46% in constant currency to $9.9 billion.
AKAM’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates
Akamai shares have rallied 44.3% over the past year compared with the industry’s 57.6% growth.
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Going by the price/earnings ratio, the company's shares currently trade at 15.79 forward earnings, lower than 20.41 for the industry.
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Earnings estimates for 2026 have declined, while those for 2027 have increased over the past 60 days.
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Akamai stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Beyond Nvidia: AI's Second Wave Is Here
The AI revolution has already minted millionaires. But the stocks everyone knows about aren't likely to keep delivering the biggest profits. AI’s second wave is moving from infrastructure to implementation and these companies are at the forefront of this transition, positioned to become what Amazon and Google were to the internet era.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).