IBM CEO Arvind Krishna speaks at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, on March 11, 2025.
Andy Wenstrand | Sxsw Conference & Festivals | Getty Images
IBM announced Monday that it is acquiring data streaming platform Confluent in a deal worth $11 billion.
Shares of Confluent soared 29% premarket. IBM stock sank about 1%.
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. Shares of Confluent closed at $23.14 on Friday.
Tune in at 10 a.m. ET as IBM CEO Arvind Krishna joins CNBC TV to discuss the deal. Watch in real time on CNBC+ or the CNBC Pro stream.
“With the acquisition of Confluent, IBM will provide the smart data platform for enterprise IT, purpose-built for AI,” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in a release.
IBM said the deal will bolster its artificial intelligence offerings as it expects global data growth to more than double by 2028.
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 help 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 overweight rating on IBM and $325 price target. IBM closed at $307.94 on Friday.
The addition of Confluent fits with IBM’s deal last year to land cloud software maker HashiCorp for $6.4 billion and the 2023 move to acquire Apptio in a deal worth $4.6 billion. Both of those acquisitions were all-cash deals.
Confluent has more 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.