Akamai Technologies is one of the oldest and largest content delivery networks in the world. Founded in 1998 by MIT researchers, the company grew out of a challenge posed by Tim Berners-Lee to solve web congestion problems. Today, Akamai’s network includes over 350,000 servers across more than 130 countries.
The platform handles a massive share of global internet traffic daily, serving everything from video streams to software downloads. Akamai’s product portfolio covers CDN, cloud security (including DDoS mitigation and bot management), edge computing, and enterprise application access.
In 2022, Akamai acquired Linode for $900 million, making a major push into the cloud computing market to compete more directly with AWS and Google Cloud. This move gave Akamai IaaS capabilities including virtual machines, object storage, and managed Kubernetes.
Akamai serves some of the world’s biggest brands, including major banks, media companies, and government agencies. The company is publicly traded on NASDAQ and consistently generates over $3.5 billion in annual revenue. Its Connected Cloud platform now combines delivery, security, and compute in a single offering.
