Akamai acquires Fermyon to boost serverless edge computing

Akamai has acquired Fermyon, a company specialising in serverless WebAssembly technology, in a move intended to expand its cloud and edge computing capabilities.

The acquisition aims to enable enterprises to deploy lightweight code and edge-native applications with improved performance and reduced costs compared to traditional cloud-native applications.

Platform integration

Fermyon's function-as-a-service (FaaS) technology will be merged with Akamai's distributed cloud platform.

This combination is designed to allow developers to build, deploy, and operate applications closer to users, supporting faster execution times and more efficient resource utilisation. The integration is expected to address growing demand as artificial intelligence tasks increasingly shift to the edge of networks.

"Fermyon's FaaS capabilities, combined with Akamai's cloud, will make it even easier for developers to innovate and execute lightweight code at the edge," said Adam Karon, Chief Operating Officer and General Manager, Cloud Technology Group, Akamai Technologies. "As Akamai continues to expand compute from core data centres to the edge of the internet, this technology will give developers a broad continuum of cloud native and serverless options to build and deploy their next great application."

Open-source commitments

Fermyon is active in the open-source community, maintaining the Spin and SpinKube projects in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Akamai stated it will continue supporting these initiatives. Fermyon's co-founders and employees are set to join Akamai as part of the Cloud Technology Group, continuing their work on open-source technology and serverless tools within the new parent company.

Edge computing focus

Akamai intends to use Fermyon's expertise to further integrate serverless functions with its performance and security products. The strategy is to create a more seamless environment for developing, deploying and securing edge applications, focusing on performance, cost efficiency and scale. Akamai's cloud platform will be enhanced with programmability and flexibility to support artificial intelligence workloads and other functions deployed at the edge.

Financial outlook

The company does not expect the acquisition to have a material impact on its financial guidance for 2025.

"Fermyon's FaaS capabilities, combined with Akamai's cloud, will make it even easier for developers to innovate and execute lightweight code at the edge," said Karon.