Akamai vs Vercel

Akamai Technologies To Hold Third Quarter 2026 Investor Conference Call

Akamai Technologies announced today that the company will hold a conference call for investors on November 5.

a16z Leads Series A in Private Network Startup doxxnet

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) announced it is leading a Series A investment in doxxnet, a startup building a private, parallel internet infrastructure for individuals and AI agents. doxxnet offers a software-defined global network with non-Internet domains, encrypted peer-to-peer communication, and DNS-level threat protection, all without requiring personal information like email or phone. The company is founded by Barrett Lyon, known for Prolexic (acquired by Akamai), BitGravity, and Defense.net. The funding will support the development of its 'Agentic Defined Networking' concept, which allows users and their agents to configure and control the network. The announcement highlights growing privacy needs driven by AI agents that operate with access to user data.

• a16z is leading a Series A investment in doxxnet.
• doxxnet provides a private, parallel internet infrastructure for users and AI agents.
• doxxnet was founded by Barrett Lyon, who previously founded Prolexic, BitGravity, and Defense.net.

Akamai Announces $11.6 Billion Multi-year Agreement with Anthropic to Support Growing Demand

Akamai today announced a significantly expanded relationship with Anthropic for $11.6 billion of contractual commitment over seven years.

Vercel AI Gateway Shows Jev Fastest Adopted Model

According to data published by Vercel, its AI gateway shows that Jev, a decision model from TypeSafe AI, reached 35% usage among paid teams within two weeks of launch, making it the fastest-adopted model in Vercel's history. Jev is designed for efficient classification by choosing from limited outputs. The data also indicates that open-source models now account for over 70% of tokens processed and nearly 25% of spend through the gateway, while spending on frontier labs has grown tenfold, suggesting complementary growth. Vercel itself adopted Jev to replace GPT-6 Luna for classifying harmful commands. The report provides first concrete usage data amid buzz around decision models, with OpenAI and Amazon releasing competing models.

• Jev reached 35% usage among paid teams within two weeks of launch.
• Jev is nearly double the reach of the second most popular model, Sonnet 5.5.
• Jev was launched in limited release on September 15 by TypeSafe AI.

Firebase Global Outage, OpenAI Platform Shift

This issue of The Pulse covers the global outage of Firebase's iOS SDK, which crashed apps using Firebase Analytics for 2-6 hours. Google failed to update its status page or provide a postmortem, criticized given its reputation for incident management. Also, OpenAI is evolving into a platform where users can allocate ChatGPT spend across open models and AI offerings from 16 partners, not just OpenAI's own models. Data from Vercel's AI gateway shows 60% of model spend goes to open-weight models, with OpenRouter confirming a shift towards open models. Additionally, a new take suggests CTOs and VPEs are leaving due to AI tools enabling solo or small-team development, rather than 'founder mode'.

• Firebase iOS SDK crashed, affecting apps for 2-6 hours.
• Google did not update status page or publish a postmortem.
• OpenAI now allows ChatGPT spend on open models from 16 partners.

Photon raises $4.5M for messaging-based AI agents

Photon, an AI startup building infrastructure for developers to create agents over messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, has closed a $4.5 million seed round. The round was co-led by Gradient and A*, with participation from Vercel, HongShan, Z Fellows, Llama Ventures, Karman, and angel investors. The company reports over 40,000 developer sign-ups, 10x revenue growth in four months, and a 3% churn. Photon offers a unified API, channel framework, CLI, and observability suite, enabling agents to operate across messaging channels. It counts Corgi Insurance, Boardy, Ditto, Rho, Fliptexts, and Slashy as customers, and integrates with Vercel, Nous Research, Tencent, and other ecosystems. Co-founders Daniel Tian and Ryan Zhu founded Photon after observing difficulties in user adoption of standalone apps, betting on agents as replacement.

• Photon raised $4.5 million in seed funding.
• The round was co-led by Gradient and A*, with participation from Vercel, HongShan, and others.
• Photon has over 40,000 developer sign-ups and 10x revenue growth in four months.