IBM and Confluent, Inc. have entered into a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Confluent for US$31 per share, representing an enterprise value of US$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.
Jay Kreps, CEO & Co-founder of Confluent, has commented:
“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. 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.”
In April 2024 IDC estimated 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.
Arvind Krishna, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer has commented:
“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. With the acquisition of Confluent, IBM will provide the smart data platform for enterprise IT, purpose-built for AI.”
Confluent excels at preparing data for AI, keeping it clean and connected across systems and applications, eliminating silos inherent in agentic AI. Confluent’s reported total addressable market (TAM) stands at US$100 billion in 2025. Confluent’s real-time data and event streaming capabilities, combined with IBM’s AI infrastructure software and Automation offerings, will improve the positioning of the companies to capture this opportunity.
Confluent 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 and Snowflake.
Confluent is built on Apache Kafka®, an open-source data and event streaming platform for data in motion. Confluent’s platform includes Data Streaming, Connectors, Stream Governance, Stream Processing, Tableflow, Confluent Intelligence and Streaming Agents. The platform has flexible deployment options, including:
-
- Confluent Cloud: A fully managed deployment of Confluent’s data streaming platform. Its serverless Apache Kafka engine powers the most efficient way to deploy and scale real-time data streams in the cloud.
- Confluent Platform: The self-managed deployment of Confluent’s data streaming platform, powered by a cloud-native, enterprise-grade distribution of Apache Kafka.
- WarpStream: A hybrid Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) deployment model with the ease of use of a fully cloud hosted solution, but the cost profile, security and data sovereignty of a self-hosted deployment.
- Confluent Private Cloud: Brings a cloud‑native, managed‑service experience to self‑managed, private environments, applying Confluent Cloud’s Kora innovations to on‑prem and private cloud Kafka workloads.
The board of directors of IBM and the board of directors and independent special committee of Confluent have each approved the transaction. The acquisition is subject to approval by Confluent shareholders, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The transaction is expected to close by the middle of 2026.
The article contains statement about future transactions that may/may not occur. Caution should be exercised and advice should be sought for any weight put on events that may or may not occur.
