IBM CEO Arvind Krishna speaks on the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, on March 11, 2025.
Andy Wenstrand | Sxsw Conference & Festivals | Getty Images
IBM announced Monday that it’s acquiring data streaming platform Confluent in a deal value $11 billion.
Shares of Confluent soared 29%. IBM stock climbed about 1%.
“Data, and particularly real-time data, is incredibly essential to how an enterprise functions,” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Monday. “No person can live with month-old data, and even week-old data, and Confluent has essentially the most capable technology to unlock the real-time value of knowledge.”
Krishna said Confluent might be a part of its software unit.
IBM can pay $31 per share in money for all the issued and outstanding common shares of Confluent, in keeping with a release. The transaction is anticipated to shut by the center of 2026. Shares of Confluent closed at $23.14 on Friday.
“With the acquisition of Confluent, IBM will provide the smart data platform for enterprise IT, purpose-built for AI,” Krishna said in a release.
IBM said the deal will bolster its artificial intelligence offerings because it expects global data growth to greater than double by 2028, with the movement into AI agents accelerating in 2026.
“I believe this ability to now have one layer, one control plane, where people can manage to present data to the AI agents, but still manage to ensure that it’s done with the right security and the right controls, I believe, goes to unlock lots,” Krishna told CNBC.
Wedbush called it a “strong move” from IBM that adds more data processing capabilities to its hybrid cloud ecosystem and is a natural fit to assist eliminate data silos for powering AI.
“We loudly applaud this deal as Arvind takes IBM further into the AI Revolution with more acquisitions likely ahead,” the analysts said in a note.
Wedbush maintained its chubby rating on IBM and $325 price goal. IBM closed at $307.94 on Friday.
The addition of Confluent matches with IBM’s deal last 12 months to land cloud software maker HashiCorp for $6.4 billion and the 2023 move to accumulate Apptio in a deal value $4.6 billion. Each of those acquisitions were all-cash deals.
Confluent has greater than 6,500 clients across major industries and works with Anthropic, Amazon‘s AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft, Snowflake and others.
Confluent one-day stock chart.
