IBM to Acquire Confluent for $11B in All-Cash Transaction to Boost AI Data Offerings  

IBM has made an offer to acquire Confluent, a data streaming platform, for $11 billion, as the tech giant seeks to boost its artificial intelligence portfolio. 

IBM says it will pay $31 per share in an all-cash transaction for all of the issued and outstanding common shares of the company. 

The move comes after IBM predicts more than one billion new “logical” AI applications are expected to double by 2028, with rapid developments into AI agents next year.  

In part of the acquisition, IBM and Confluent will “enable end-to-end integration of applications, analytics, data systems, and AI agents” to further drive growth in hybrid cloud environments. 

“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,” Arvind Krishna, IBM’s CEO, president, and chairman, said. “Data is spread across public and private clouds, datacenters, and countless technology providers.” 

The transaction, which is expected to close by mid-next year, will grant Confluent’s shareholders, who hold about 62% of voting rights of Confluent’s outstanding common stock, to vote on all their common shares, agreeing on the transaction and against any “alternative” transactions, the tech company said. 

IBM’s latest bid comes after the tech giant closed its $6.4 billion acquisition of HashiCorp, an enterprise software company. The acquisition integrates HashiCorp’s tools, Terraform and Vault, into IBM’s growing AI portfolio. 

While the equity markets continue to show a healthy sign of adapting to the surge in AI across top sectors, the bond market is flashing warning signs. Tech firms are increasingly tapping public credit markets to finance data centers, semiconductor capacity, and energy-intensive compute infrastructure. 

Morgan Stanley predicts that global AI-related spending will create a $1.5 trillion financing gap that tech firms will need to fund through credit markets by 2028. 

California-based Confluent, which is valued at $8 billion, provides “real-time” cloud data streaming and currently has more than 6,500 clients, and New York-based IBM is valued at $288 billion in market capitalization.