2025-12-08 14:45
publication
2025-12-08 14:45
International Business Machines Corp. will buy streaming platform Confluent for USD 11 billion ($31 per share), including debt, Bloomberg reported on Monday. Both companies want to finalize the agreement in mid-2026.
Confluent will be acquired for cash. IBM expects the transaction to be accretive to adjusted EBITDA in the first full year and accretive to free cash flow in the second year after closing.
It is one of the largest acquisitions in IBM's history and a step towards creating the enterprise software that artificial intelligence tools need to perform tasks in real time.
Business California-based Confluent offers companies a platform to collect and analyze real-time data. Manufacturers, such as Michelin, use the Confluent platform to optimize live inventories of raw materials and semi-finished products. Companies are increasingly using AI systems that manage such tasks in real time and require live data flows to do so.
IBM, a pioneer of mainframe computers, has been trying to focus its activities around artificial intelligence for several years. Under CEO Arvind Krishna, the company buys software companies and sells generative artificial intelligence services to enterprise clients.
Software now accounts for almost half of IBM's total revenues, and its share of the balance sheet continues to grow. The acquisition of Confluent would be IBM's biggest deal since it bought cloud software company Red Hat in 2019 for about $34 billion.
The acquisition continues a five-year partnership between the two companies that has enabled some IBM customers to use Confluent's data streaming platform.
In February, IBM completed its $6.4 billion purchase of HashiCorp and recently considered acquiring Informatica, another infrastructure solutions provider that was ultimately acquired by Salesforce.
The Confluent acquisition stands out from the multi-billion deals that have dominated the AI market in recent months, focused largely on data centers and the computing power needed to create and power the AI systems themselves. Growing demand for such computing power has fueled recent M&A and collaboration deals, including BlackRock's $40 billion purchase of Aligned Data Centers and Oracle's deal to provide OpenAI with approximately 4.5 gigawatts of computing power, at a value approaching $300 billion.
Confluent shares fell 17% this year before the Wall Street Journal reported that IBM was in talks to buy the company. The stock price is well below the intraday high of $94.97 per share in November 2021, reached after the company's initial public offering.
Confluent shares are up 29% on Monday. before the session, and IBM falls by 1%. (PAP Business)
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