<p><strong>ARMONK, NY </strong>&#8212; IBM has agreed to buy Confluent, Inc., the data streaming pioneer, for $31 per share, representing an enterprise value of $11 billion. Confluent provides a leading open-source enterprise data streaming platform that connects, processes and governs reusable and reliable data and events in real time, foundational for the deployment of AI.</p>
<p>Confluent is headquartered in Mountain View, CA and currently has more than 6,500 clients across major industries – more than 40% of the Fortune 500. The company partners and integrates across the technology industry with leaders like Anthropic, AWS, GCP, Microsoft, Snowflake and more. This is consistent with IBM’s approach to deep industry partnership and working across a broad and open technology ecosystem of application providers, ISVs and hyperscalers.</p>
<p>IDC estimates that more than one billion new logical applications will emerge by 2028, reshaping technology architectures across industries. To fuel meaningful outcomes and drive productivity in operations, these applications, as well as AI agents, need access to connected and trusted data – in real time. IBM and Confluent will enable end-to-end integration of applications, analytics, data systems and AI agents to drive intelligence and resilience in hybrid cloud environments.</p>
<p>“IBM and Confluent together will enable enterprises to deploy generative and agentic AI better and faster by providing trusted communication and data flow between environments, applications and APIs. Data is spread across public and private clouds, datacenters and countless technology providers,” said <strong>Arvind Krishna, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer</strong>. “With the acquisition of Confluent, IBM will provide the smart data platform for enterprise IT, purpose-built for AI.”</p>
<p>“Since its founding, Confluent has helped organizations unlock the full potential of their data, driving innovation in an increasingly complex IT landscape. We are extremely proud of the work we’ve done in providing clients with a real-time data streaming platform for the next era of technology, including generative and agentic AI,” said <strong>Jay Kreps, CEO &; Co-founder, Confluent</strong>. “We are excited by the potential to join IBM and to accelerate our strategy with IBM’s go-to-market expertise, global scale and extensive portfolio. I look forward to the future we will build together as Confluent becomes part of IBM.”</p>
<p>The real-time nature of Confluent’s platform is critical for organizations as they leverage data living across all IT environments. Confluent addresses the challenges of today’s technology and data landscape. Confluent excels at preparing data for AI, keeping it clean and connected across systems and applications, eliminating silos inherent in agentic AI. In the last four years alone, Confluent’s total addressable market (TAM) has doubled from $50 billion to $100 billion in 2025<a title="" href="https://newsroom.ibm.com/2025-12-08-ibm-to-acquire-confluent-to-create-smart-data-platform-for-enterprise-generative-ai#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a>. Confluent’s real-time data and event streaming capabilities, combined with IBM’s AI infrastructure software and Automation offerings, will better position the companies to capture this opportunity.</p>
<p><strong><u>IBM says the Confluent deal will boost the company in the following ways:</u></strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Strategic Fit: </strong>Confluent is a natural fit for IBM, consistent with the company’s hybrid cloud and AI strategy. Data and applications are experiencing dramatic growth – by 2028, global data will more than double, and over one billion new applications will emerge. This exponential growth will be amplified by the continued adoption of AI, increasing demands on IT departments. Organizations around the world turn to IBM to simplify, automate and integrate disparate systems. The addition of Confluent will complement IBM’s existing capabilities in its Data and Automation portfolio. Additionally, the acquisition of Confluent represents further commitment to IBM’s 25-year history of open-source innovation and investment, building on the acquisitions of open-source leaders like Red Hat and HashiCorp.</li>
<li><strong>Strong Synergy Opportunities: </strong>The acquisition of Confluent is expected to drive substantial product synergies across IBM’s portfolio &#8211; including AI products and services, Automation, Data and Consulting &#8211; and accelerate revenue growth by leveraging IBM’s go-to-market reach. The acquisition is also expected to result in significant operational efficiencies through IBM’s scale and best-in-class productivity actions.</li>
<li><strong>Attractive Financial Profile: </strong>The acquisition of Confluent is expected to accelerate IBM’s growth over time. IBM also anticipates that the transaction will be accretive to adjusted EBITDA within the first full year and free cash flow in year two, post close.</li>
</ul>
<p>Confluent is built on Apache Kafka, an open-source data and event streaming platform for data in motion. Apache Kafka enables fast, reliable and scalable data streaming capabilities for analytics, monitoring and event-driven architectures. Confluent’s platform includes Data Streaming, Connectors, Stream Governance, Stream Processing, Tableflow, Confluent Intelligence and Streaming Agents. </p>

SANTA CLARA -- Marvell Technology, Inc., a leader in data infrastructure semiconductor solutions, plans to…
MOUNTAIN VIEW -- ALM Ventures has announced the launch of ALM Ventures Fund I, a…
SAN FRANCISCO -- Brainworks Ventures, an AI-native venture capital fund led by DARPA alumnus Dr.…
OpenAI is hiring Slack CEO Denise Dresser as the company's Chief Revenue Officer, overseeing global…
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office has charged a San Jose 17-year-old with attempted…
SANTA CLARA — Lemurian Labs has secured $28 million in an oversubscribed Series A round,…