IBM announced its intention to acquire Confluent, Inc., the data streaming pioneer, signing a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all the issued and outstanding common shares of Confluent 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, which is foundational for the deployment of AI.
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, according to the companies.
"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 Arvind Krishna, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. "With the acquisition of Confluent, IBM will provide the smart data platform for enterprise IT, purpose-built for AI."
The real-time nature of Confluent's platform is critical for organizations as they leverage data living across all IT environments.
Confluent excels at preparing data for AI, keeping it clean and connected across systems and applications, eliminating silos inherent in agentic AI.
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, the companies said.
"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 Jay Kreps, CEO and co-founder, Confluent. "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."
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 such as 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, IBM said.
The following platforms will move under the IBM umbrella:
- 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.
Confluent's largest shareholders and investors, who collectively hold approximately 62% of the voting power of Confluent's outstanding common stock, entered into a voting agreement with IBM pursuant to which each has agreed to vote all of their common shares in favor of the transaction and against any alternative transactions.
The transaction is expected to close by the middle of 2026.
For more information about this news, visit www.ibm.com.