IBM introduced Monday that it’s buying knowledge streaming platform Confluent in a deal value $11 billion.
Shares of Confluent soared 29%. IBM inventory climbed about 1%.
“Knowledge, and particularly real-time knowledge, is extremely essential to how an enterprise capabilities,” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna instructed CNBC’s “Squawk on the Road” on Monday. “No person can stay with month-old knowledge, and even week-old knowledge, and Confluent has probably the most succesful know-how to unlock the real-time worth of information.”
Krishna mentioned Confluent might be a part of its software program unit.
IBM can pay $31 per share in money for all the issued and excellent frequent shares of Confluent, in line with a launch. The transaction is predicted to shut by the center of 2026. Shares of Confluent closed at $23.14 on Friday.
“With the acquisition of Confluent, IBM will present the good knowledge platform for enterprise IT, purpose-built for AI,” Krishna mentioned in a launch.
IBM mentioned the deal will bolster its synthetic intelligence choices because it expects world knowledge progress to greater than double by 2028, with the motion into AI brokers accelerating in 2026.
“I feel this skill to now have one layer, one management airplane, the place individuals can handle to present knowledge to the AI brokers, however nonetheless handle to guarantee that it is finished with the proper safety and the proper controls, I feel, goes to unlock quite a bit,” Krishna instructed CNBC.
Wedbush referred to as it a “robust transfer” from IBM that provides extra knowledge processing capabilities to its hybrid cloud ecosystem and is a pure match to assist remove knowledge silos for powering AI.
“We loudly applaud this deal as Arvind takes IBM additional into the AI Revolution with extra acquisitions probably forward,” the analysts mentioned in a word.
Wedbush maintained its chubby ranking on IBM and $325 worth goal. IBM closed at $307.94 on Friday.
The addition of Confluent matches with IBM’s deal final yr to land cloud software program maker HashiCorp for $6.4 billion and the 2023 transfer to amass Apptio in a deal value $4.6 billion. Each of these acquisitions have been all-cash offers.
Confluent has greater than 6,500 shoppers throughout main industries and works with Anthropic, Amazon‘s AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft, Snowflake and others.
Confluent one-day inventory chart.
