Akamai Technologies Inc

Cambridge, UNITED STATES (U.S.A.)www.akamai.com/
Invested through / Financed by
  • Triodos Global Equities Impact Fund
Asset classListed equity
Impact strategyImpact Equities and Bonds
SectorOther
ISIN codeUS00971T1016
Industry groupSoftware & services
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
  • Good health and well-being

Founded in 1998, Akamai Technologies provides services for delivering and optimising content and business applications over the internet (Delivery), enterprise security solutions (Security), and cloud computing solutions (Compute), in the United States and internationally. It sells its solutions through direct sales and service organizations, as well as through various channel partners.

Investment rationale

Global internet traffic volumes have been growing strongly since its inception, which puts a high burden on the internet performance, reliability and security. Since Akamai was founded in 1998, the company's goal has remained the same: to make the internet fast, reliable and secure. Akamai has the world's largest edge platform, a decentralised network that provides better performance, higher reliability, greater scale, lower cost, and stronger security compared to a centralized approach. Aside from issues with performance, the high growth of global internet traffic also poses environmental issues. The internet is responsible for approximately 2% of global energy usage. However, Akamai aims to mitigate these adverse impacts. Compared to poorly managed on-premise servers, Akamai's edge platform is more energy efficient. In 2020, Akamai used 10 times less energy per unit of capacity compared to 2015, while the edge platform capacity grew with 350%. Its edge platform is now powered with more than 50% of renewable energy and 100% of e-waste is recycled. The company continues to improve its sustainability practices and is aiming by 2030 to source 100% renewable energy for own operations, reach net zero carbon and build a 50% more energy efficient Akamai platform.