Akamai Technologies (AKAM) Citi’s 2026 Global TMT Conference summary

Strategic evolution and business transformation

• Shifted from content delivery to a majority compute and security business over the past year, driven by cloud capability investments and enterprise-grade solutions.

• Acquisition and integration of Linode enabled support for large-scale, mission-critical applications and AI workloads, positioning to compete with hyperscalers.

• Distributed architecture and edge capabilities allow for low-latency, high-throughput applications, especially in AI and video processing.

• Security and compute now drive growth, with delivery remaining important but less central to future expansion.

Industry trends and AI impact

• AI adoption mirrors the early internet era, with both hype and real transformative potential, especially in distributed computing.

• Proliferation of bots and AI agents has increased security challenges and changed the nature of internet traffic, though most traffic remains non-human.

• AI-driven traffic is not yet materially increasing delivery volumes, but future use cases like real-time video and translation could shift this.

• Security threats have intensified, with attack sizes increasing tenfold due to AI-enabled adversaries.

Business segment performance and competitive landscape

• Delivery business remains strategically important, focusing on cash flow rather than aggressive revenue growth, with disciplined pricing and selective deal participation.

• Security segment benefits from mature products (WAF, DDoS) and new solutions (Bot & Agent Control, micro-segmentation), with AI trends providing tailwinds.

• Cloud and compute (CIS) business is the primary growth engine, expected to drive company-wide revenue acceleration into the low teens next year.