Akamai Technologies' (AKAM) unique platform is proving to be a rare opportunity in the compute space and has cemented about $2.8 billion in cloud infrastructure service deals year to date, RBC Capital Markets said in a note emailed Friday after meeting company executives including CEO Tom Leighton.

The investment firm said that, while larger deals like one with a frontier model developer, comprise the bulk of the $2.8 billion figure, the company's pipeline also has "smaller customers on multi-year contracts, showing strong demand signals."

Additionally, Akamai's management highlighted its "extensive points of presence" as a "competitive moat, providing lower cost cloud services to the hyperscalers," RBC said.

The investment firm said that Akamai's management believes the company "offers a different value proposition than neoclouds, who focus on training massive foundational models with larger, more centralized data centers."

RBC also said that the company's management noted that Akamai still has "strong pricing power over contracts, passing through variable costs that come with hardware and servers to customers."

RBC kept Akamai's sector perform rating and $135 price target.

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