Tom Leighton

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Akamai Technologies

Last Reviewed: October 1, 2026

Executive Summary

Tom Leighton co-founded Akamai Technologies in 1998 and has run it since 2013. He is also a professor of applied mathematics at MIT, on leave, which is rare for the chief executive of a large public company. Akamai began as a content delivery network pioneer. Under Leighton it has become a cybersecurity and cloud computing company. By Akamai’s account, revenue roughly tripled to $4.2 billion between 2012 and 2025, and security became its largest business. In 2026 the company’s newest growth engine, cloud infrastructure for AI workloads, began signing multi-billion-dollar contracts.

Career Highlights

• Co-founder of Akamai Technologies in 1998 and a director ever since.
• Chief Scientist of Akamai from 1998 to 2012, and a key developer of the software underlying its platform.
• Chief Executive Officer since January 2013.
• Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT since 1982, currently on leave.
• Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2017; Marconi Prize in 2018; IEEE John von Neumann Medal in 2023.
• Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professional Journey

Leighton graduated summa cum laude from Princeton in 1978 with a B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science. He earned a Ph.D. in applied mathematics at MIT in 1981 and joined its faculty as a professor of applied mathematics in 1982. His research made him, in Akamai’s words, “one of the world’s preeminent authorities on algorithms for network applications and cybersecurity”. He holds more than 50 patents in content delivery, internet protocols, network algorithms, cryptography and digital rights management.

In 1998 he co-founded Akamai with Danny Lewin, licensing technology from MIT, and became its Chief Scientist. He was a co-founder and key developer of the software underlying the platform. He held the Chief Scientist role until 2012 and has sat on the board since 1998. From 2003 to 2005 he served on the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, chairing its Cybersecurity Subcommittee.

He became Chief Executive Officer in January 2013. Akamai says that since then revenue has grown from under $1.4 billion in 2012 to $4.2 billion in 2025, earnings per share have nearly tripled, and security revenue has grown from under $25 million to $2.2 billion a year. The company now describes itself as “the cybersecurity and cloud computing company that powers and protects business online”.

The cloud side accelerated in 2026. In its second-quarter results Akamai said it had signed multi-year Cloud Infrastructure Services contracts worth over $2.8 billion in the year to date. Leighton said those wins “validate Akamai’s growing position as a key AI infrastructure provider”. In September 2026 the company disclosed two further project plans under a master services agreement with Anthropic for dedicated cloud computing capacity. Anthropic committed to pay approximately $11.6 billion in aggregate over initial seven-year terms.

His recognition spans both of his careers. He and Lewin were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2017. He received the Marconi Prize in 2018 and the IEEE John von Neumann Medal in 2023, and he belongs to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a long-standing advocate for STEM education. He supports the Akamai Foundation and Akamai Technical Academy, Society for Science, the Mathematical Association of America and Girls Who Code.

Education

Princeton University

B.S., summa cum laude, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1978

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ph.D., Applied Mathematics, 1981