IBM wants to better position itself in the data infrastructure market with the acquisition of Confluent.
In a press release, IBM confirms the acquisition of Confluent for a value of $11 billion. With this, the company aims to expand its AI and hybrid cloud offering. The transaction is expected to be completed by mid-2026.
“IBM and Confluent together enable companies to roll out generative and agentic AI better and faster by providing trusted communication and data flow between environments, applications, and APIs. Data is distributed across public and private clouds, data centers, and numerous technology vendors,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM Chairman, President, and CEO of IBM. “With the acquisition of Confluent, IBM will deliver the smart data platform for enterprise IT, specifically developed for AI.”
Strategic move
Confluent is used to process large amounts of data. The technology has become a foundation for modern cloud and AI applications, making IBM’s interest unsurprising. The company wants to strengthen its software division after signals that cloud market growth is slowing.
IBM bought HashiCorp for $6.4 billion last year and wants to focus more on software and AI-driven cloud services. An acquisition of Confluent fits into that strategy and better positions IBM against rivals who are investing heavily in data infrastructure.
Data infrastructure popular
The market for data platforms remains hot. Confluent was already linked to a possible sale this fall after receiving interest from multiple parties. Salesforce also recently acquired AI company Informatica for $8 billion, driven by the same AI boom.