As global AI technology reshapes the digital economy landscape, the performance and strategic layout of cloud - service provider Akamai in Greater China have garnered significant attention.

In 2025, Akamai's Greater China business witnessed double - digit growth, surpassing the global average. Cloud computing, in particular, shone brightly, with a nearly 40% year - on - year increase, emerging as a key driver for global business growth.

This remarkable performance is fueled by two powerful forces: the robust momentum of Chinese enterprises expanding globally and local AI innovation.

Akamai's transformation mirrors a structural shift in the cloud services industry. The company is evolving from a traditional content delivery network provider to a frontrunner fully embracing security and cloud computing solutions.

In this transformative journey, the wave of Chinese enterprises going global has acted as a vital catalyst. Li Sheng, Akamai's Vice President and General Manager of Greater China, stressed that the vibrant growth of Chinese enterprises in the global market has laid a solid foundation for Akamai's business.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, Akamai forged a global strategic partnership with NVIDIA to jointly introduce the Akamai Inference Cloud—an edge cloud platform tailored specifically for AI inference.

Built on NVIDIA's AI infrastructure, the Akamai Inference Cloud aims to deliver secure, low - latency performance for edge AI. By shifting AI inference from the core to the edge, it enables a new generation of applications capable of real - time perception, reasoning, and action.

The cloud platform offers customers three core benefits:

Facilitating faster AI service operation

Ensuring AI workload security at the edge

Enabling the development of AI applications free from vendor lock - in

In the gaming industry, for a mobile game developed by a Japanese gaming company that employs text - to - image models for image generation, Akamai Inference Cloud's benchmark tests revealed a 2.5 - fold reduction in latency for game multimedia asset generation, a 3 - fold increase in throughput, and an 86% cost reduction.

In the streaming media industry, Akamai's solutions leverage AI to enhance user engagement and content rediscovery capabilities. They automatically identify video content and highlight key moments through AI.

In the automotive industry, by utilizing Akamai's AI Inference Cloud, a Southeast Asian in - vehicle software company reduced the response latency of its in - vehicle AI voice assistant by 30%, enhancing both user experience and driving safety.

Guided by the global AI Inference Cloud strategy, Akamai is also stepping up its localization efforts in the Chinese market. Li Sheng disclosed, "Starting from the fourth quarter of last year, we have had in - depth discussions with several well - known domestic AI startups. We anticipate the implementation of practical application scenarios in the first quarter of next year."

In September 2025, Akamai launched the new Akamai Partner Connect, a unified global program designed to replace the existing partner system with a single framework.

This program is more adaptable to local market needs, granting regional teams greater autonomy to provide support based on partners' operating locations and methods.

In terms of localization, Akamai plans to strengthen ecosystem collaboration, especially developer community building. It will host events and introduce incentive policies to help developers access edge computing resources more conveniently.

Facing the future competitive landscape, Li Sheng believes that AI technology will drive new market changes: "In the future, there will be more vertical cloud service providers focusing on AI training and applications. Akamai will leverage its unique advantages, such as distributed architecture, low latency, and cost predictability, to achieve breakthroughs in unexplored areas."

With the rapid development of AI technology, security threats have taken on new forms. Liu Ye, Akamai's Technical Director for North Asia, pointed out that AI - related threats mainly originate from two aspects: threats posed by AI and threats targeting AI.

The proliferation of AI - Bots has been particularly remarkable, with annual increases exceeding 200% in both Web and API traffic. Large models, in need of vast amounts of data for training, deploy numerous AI - Bots to collect information.

API security has become another major concern. Attacks are characterized by shorter durations, with attackers able to launch attacks simply by reconnoitering interfaces and enumerating endpoints.

To tackle these new challenges, Akamai unveiled the "AI Firewall" specifically designed for large AI models in 2025. Deployed at the application frontend, this firewall filters input prompts and output key content, with the core function of preventing unauthorized actions such as prompt injection and avoiding the leakage of personal sensitive information.

In addition to targeted security products, Akamai has deeply integrated AI technology into the entire security protection process. AI technology is continuously used to enhance Bot identification accuracy, while generative AI simplifies interactions with the security platform.

References:

https://news.futunn.com/hk/post/67612463?level=2&data_ticket=1766116194545042

https://www.doit.com.cn/p/553413.html

https://www.ccidnet.com/cpfwyjs/1015492.jhtml