IBM announced it has officially completed its acquisition of Confluent, Inc., the data streaming platform that powers real-time operations, enabling the combined companies to deliver a smart data platform that gives every AI model, agent, and automated workflow the real-time, trusted data needed to operate across on-premises and hybrid cloud environments at scale.
Together IBM and Confluent provide the fabric through which AI agents can access the information they need, with the controls, governance, and real-time velocity to put information to work safely and at scale, according to the companies.
That scale of demand requires a new kind of data foundation, and IBM and Confluent address that challenge directly, giving enterprises a single, governed platform where AI models and agents can operate with context, in real time, across every environment.
“Transactions happen in milliseconds, and AI decisions need to happen just as fast. With Confluent, we are giving clients the ability to move trusted data continuously across their entire operation so their AI models and agents can act on what is happening right now, not on data that is hours old” said Rob Thomas, senior vice president, IBM Software and chief commercial officer. “Together, IBM and Confluent give enterprises the foundation for a new operating model—one where AI runs on live data, drives decisions in real time, and delivers value at scale.”
Built on Apache Kafka, the standard for data streaming, Confluent is already embedded in the operational fabric of the world's largest enterprises, with a customer base that spans industries from financial services and healthcare to manufacturing and retail.
“Since our founding, Confluent’s mission has been to set the world’s data in motion, making data streaming as foundational to the enterprise as the database. Joining IBM allows us to accelerate that mission at a much greater scale,” said Jay Kreps, CEO and co-founder of Confluent. “IBM’s global reach and deep enterprise relationships will help us go further, faster. As enterprises move from experimenting with AI to running their business on it, helping data flow continuously across the business has never mattered more. I’m excited to see what we’ll build together.”
This announcement brings immediate integrations across the IBM portfolio, including:
- AI-ready, real-time data. Confluent streams live operational events directly into watsonx.data—ensuring every model, agent, and workflow runs on continuously updated enterprise data, with lineage, policy enforcement, and quality controls included.
- Activate the modernized mainframe in the AI era. The most critical business transactions in the world have long run on IBM Z. With IBM Z and Confluent, organizations can identify and drive real-time events at the transaction source as well as stream transactional data directly for real-time analytics, automation, and AI workflows.
- Event-driven automation across hybrid environments. IBM MQ and IBM webMethods Hybrid Integration form the foundation of enterprise event-driven automation, combining trusted transactional messaging with modern integration and orchestration across hybrid environments. Confluent extends this platform with high-scale event streaming, enabling applications, APIs, and AI agents to sense and act on business events in real time.
With Confluent, IBM Consulting and IBM partners will help clients build the data foundation their AI needs—live, governed, and continuously flowing across every system and environment.
Under the terms of the agreement, IBM has acquired all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Confluent for $31 per share in cash, representing an enterprise value of approximately $11 billion.
For more information about this news, visit www.ibm.com.