Akamai CEO Discusses Growth, AI and TikTok Inclusion

Financial Performance - Akamai's cloud infrastructure services revenue is up 30% year-over-year and is expected to accelerate to 40%+ year-over-year by the end of the year [1] - Akamai achieved a strong beat on the quarter with earnings per share up 9% at $1.73 [2] Strategic Direction & Market Opportunity - Akamai is pursuing a tremendous market opportunity in cloud infrastructure, driven by customer demand and strong tailwinds from Gen AI [1][3] - Akamai's distributed platform, with points of presence in 750 cities, allows it to offer enterprise compute instances and containers closer to end users, resulting in lower latency, better performance, and potentially lower prices [3] - A hyperscaler is an early adopter of Akamai's new managed container service, seeking to have compute instances in hundreds of cities [4] Security Landscape - Security is a major revenue driver for Akamai, with market-leading solutions for web app firewall, bot management, API security, and ransomware protection [1][7] - Attack rates and penetrations are increasing, driving demand for Akamai's security solutions that stop damage caused by attacks, including ransomware [7][8] Generative AI & Skills - Generative AI is making the field of security more evolving and nimble [9] - Akamai is seeing tremendous efficiencies across most job types by leveraging Gen AI, and is providing training to employees to use Gen AI tools [10] TikTok Situation - While there's always risk, Akamai believes a deal regarding TikTok has been structured, and the ban has been postponed several times [5][6]