American tech giant IBM announced last month the acquisition of Confluent, a pioneering company in data streaming, for $11 billion. The buyout will allow IBM to strengthen its AI platform and cloud offerings, thanks to the integration of Confluent’s real-time data technology.

At $31 per share, IBM’s offer yields a 34% premium. The deal should close in mid-2026, with Confluent CEO Jay Kreps joining IBM.

Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Confluent provides an open-source enterprise data stream that processes data and events in real time, crucial for implementing AI. The firm partners with major tech leaders including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

“IBM and Confluent together will enable enterprises to deploy generative and agentic AI better and faster,” explains Arvind Krishna, IBM chairman and CEO. The merger will accelerate data flow for AI environments and allow the real-time connection of data across clouds, applications, and data centers.

“The acquisition of Confluent is critical for IBM. It reasserts the company as a leader in enterprise software infrastructure, which is the technology that modern software-development practices depend upon heavily,” says Bradley Shimmin, vice president and practice lead Data and Analytics at The Futurum Group.

“When you build agentic software, wherein you have autonomous agents making split-second decisions on their own, they depend upon timely access to accurate information. With Confluent, the company behind the popular Apache Kafka streaming service, IBM is able to bring real-time information to AI models and agents. This is a huge acquisition.”

Confluent is just the latest strategic operation for IBM. The Armonk, New York-based company recently stepped up its buyout efforts to expand its cloud computing business.

In February 2025, IBM completed the all-cash $6.4 billion acquisition of HashiCorp, integrating its cloud infrastructure automation into IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI portfolio.

In 2019, in a landmark $34 billion deal, IBM bought leading open-source software company Red Hat, enabling IBM to become a major provider of hybrid cloud solutions at a global level.