IBM has announced on Monday, 8 December that it will acquire Confluent in a $11 billion deal, aiming to expand its footprint in Artificial Intelligence footprint, the tech giant said in a press release.
“IBM and Confluent together will enable enterprises to deploy generative and agentic AI better and faster,” said IBM chief Arvind Krishna in an official statement.
“With the acquisition of Confluent, IBM will provide the smart data platform for enterprise IT, purpose-built for AI,” CEO Krishna added.
Details of the deal
IBM will pay $31 per share in cash for all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Confluent, according to a release. The transaction is expected to close by the middle of 2026.
Share market reacts to the development
Confluent, whose primary product is the data streaming platform Apache Kafka, has more than 6,500 clients across major industries and works with Anthropic, Amazon’s AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft, Snowflake and others.
Following the announcement, Confluent’s stock soared 29% in premarket trading. IBM stock was down by about 1%. Shares of Confluent closed at $23.14 on Friday.
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