On June 30, Akamai, a multinational edge cloud company headquartered in the United States, finally ushered in the final date for the complete shutdown of CDN nodes in mainland China. According to Akamai’s previous notice to customers, its mainland China CDN service will reach the “retirement date” on June 30, 2026.
Access requests from mainland China that have not completed migration will be directed to nodes in neighboring countries or regions. In this regard, Akamai has also actively reached migration cooperation with Tencent Cloud and Wangsu Technology to help customers switch to local CDN services.
In 2023, Akamai still occupies about 15% of the Chinese CDN market. Data map from Akamai official website
CDN is a content delivery business, which can be simply understood as a "network warehouse" that is closer to users. Just like e-commerce platform logistics warehouses, merchants store supply goods in platform warehouses near the city in advance according to the needs of urban residents, so that users can achieve "same-day delivery" from order placement to receipt. It’s just that the CDN network warehouse distributes digital content such as official websites, pictures, videos, and software.
Akamai is also one of the early representatives of this industry. Official website information shows that Akamai is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and its global edge network includes more than 4,350 edge nodes covering more than 130 countries and regions. It has entered the Chinese market for more than 20 years.
Although Akamai started out as a CDN business, it has actively transformed its cloud business in recent years, aiming to upgrade from a CDN service provider to a distributed AI cloud service provider. After its CDN business in mainland China has withdrawn, Akamai still provides network security and other services in mainland China through its partners.
Behind the market of over 1.1 billion Internet users
The scale of China's CDN market is destined to be an existence that cannot be ignored. According to the 57th "Statistical Report on China's Internet Development Status" released by the China Internet Network Information Center, as of December 2025, the number of Internet users in China has reached 1.125 billion, and the Internet penetration rate is 80.1%; the total number of 5G base stations in China has reached 4.838 million, and about two-thirds of prefecture-level cities have reached the "Gigabit City" standard.
For international brands that rely on such a market, if the website encounters slow access, unable to load images, unstable payment or login, etc., it will directly affect the conversion rate, and cause more losses than other regional markets.
At the same time, CDN belongs to the category of value-added telecommunications business management. If you want to operate a CDN in China, you need to involve licenses and compliance. According to the "Telecommunications Regulations of the People's Republic of China", operating telecommunications business must obtain a corresponding business license. Around 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology began to issue CDN business licenses to enterprises, and Alibaba Cloud, Wangsu Technology, etc. became the first enterprises to obtain relevant licenses.
However, although the Chinese market is large, it has also attracted strong local competitors, and the competitive space for foreign CDNs has been greatly compressed.
At present, Akamai has not publicly disclosed a single, clear reason for its withdrawal. Akamai CEO Tom Leighton mentioned in an earnings call that Akamai's CDN business "has been challenged by macroeconomic and geopolitical headwinds." Some overseas technology media quoted Akamai as saying that this change was related to the adjustment of its business focus.
Growth of traditional delivery business is under pressure
Akamai became famous in its early years with CDN, but its financial report shows that it has now turned to "security, cloud computing, edge computing and AI infrastructure."
On May 8, Akamai announced a seven-year cloud computing agreement worth US$1.8 billion with a "leading cutting-edge model provider." According to sources quoted by foreign media at the time, the model supplier was the well-known artificial intelligence company Anthropic, and this was Akamai's largest single order since its establishment.
According to Akamai's financial report, in 2025, Akamai's total revenue will be US$4.208 billion, a year-on-year increase of 5%; of which security business revenue is US$2.243 billion, a year-on-year increase of 10%, accounting for more than 50% of total revenue; cloud computing revenue is US$708 million, a year-on-year increase of 12%; while traditional delivery business revenue is only US$1.257 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 5%. CDN is no longer Akamai's core revenue growth engine.
On the other hand, China's CDN market has also become highly localized after development. According to Qianzhan Industry Research Institute citing data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, China's CDN market size will be approximately 37 billion yuan in 2023, with Alibaba Cloud, Wangsu Technology, Tencent Cloud, Baidu Cloud, etc. ranking high.
Local CDN supply is stable and mature
For example, Tencent Cloud, one of Akamai's CDN business undertakers, has 2,300 acceleration nodes in its CDN in China, covering China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom and many small and medium-sized operators, with a bandwidth reserve of more than 400Tbps; it also has 900 acceleration nodes overseas, covering more than 70 countries and regions.
Another undertaking, Wangsu Technology, is one of the earliest independent CDN vendors in China. Wangsu is not a comprehensive Internet platform like Alibaba and Tencent, but has long been engaged in infrastructure business around CDN, edge computing and security services. The Securities Times quoted the company's 2025 annual report as saying that Wangsu Technology has more than 2,800 nodes; in 2025, CDN and edge computing revenue accounted for 62.11% of overall operating revenue, and security and value-added service revenue accounted for 29.61%.
In addition, Alibaba Cloud and Huawei Cloud are also important players in the CDN business. Alibaba Cloud's official information states that its CDN business has more than 3,200 nodes worldwide, more than 2,300 in mainland China, and more than 900 overseas, Hong Kong and Macau; while Huawei Cloud's official website states that its CDN business has more than 2,800 nodes worldwide, covering more than 130 countries and regions.
In fact, China's CDN market has already formed a competition pattern among local cloud vendors, traditional CDN vendors and operators. Coupled with China's huge scale of Internet users, independent regulatory framework, and mature infrastructure of cloud vendors and operators, local service providers have become more powerful in terms of their advantages in nodes, licenses, compliance, and customer support.
Of course, in some cases, localization is not necessarily better for these multinational companies. There may also be two different sets of network governance processes between mainland China sites and global sites. The benefit is clearer local access and compliance support, but the price is increased architectural complexity and governance costs. But the Chinese market is large enough and independent enough that multinational companies need to design it as a separate network area.
Today, the role of overseas vendors is shifting from directly providing local CDN services to extending services through local partners. Local cloud vendors and traditional CDN vendors are responsible for more content distribution entrances in mainland China.
This is not a simple matter of “who replaces whom”, but a re-division of transnational digital services under China’s local network, license and customer support systems.