Technology synergies between Confluent’s real-time data platform and IBM’s technology portfolio, including watsonx.data, IBM Z and IBM MQ, will provide artificial intelligence applications and agents with critical AI-ready data, according to the companies.
IBM has completed its $11 billion acquisition of Confluent and its real-time data streaming technology, the companies said Tuesday.
With the deal’s completion, IBM said the combination of the Confluent platform and its own technology portfolio create a “smart data platform” that “gives every AI model, agent and automated workflow the real-time, trusted data needed to operate across on-premises and hybrid cloud environments at scale.”
IBM and Confluent announced the acquisition deal on Dec. 8, 2025. Today IBM said it had successfully acquired all of the issued and outstanding common shares of publicly held Confluent for $31 per share in cash, representing an enterprise value of approximately $11 billion.
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Confluent’s software is used today by more than 6,500 businesses and organizations, including 40 percent of the Fortune 500, for real-time, streaming data processing tasks.
IBM said those capabilities are increasingly in demand as enterprise AI initiatives move from experimentation to production and the need for “clean, governed and continuously refreshed data – delivered at the speed and scale AI demands,” is critical.
“Transactions happen in milliseconds, and AI decisions need to happen just as fast. With Confluent, we are giving clients the ability to move trusted data continuously across their entire operation so their AI models and agents can act on what is happening right now, not on data that is hours old,” said Rob Thomas, senior vice president, IBM software and chief commercial officer, in a statement announcing the completion of the acquisition.
“Together, IBM and Confluent give enterprises the foundation for a new operating model – one where AI runs on live data, drives decisions in real time, and delivers value at scale,” Thomas said.
The two companies, in a blog post, also announced “immediate integrations” between Confluent’s technology and IBM’s product portfolio that provide significant product synergies.
Confluent, for example, can stream live data into watsonx.data, IBM’s hybrid-cloud data lakehouse platform, to provide data for AI models, agents and workflows with data lineage, policy enforcement and quality controls.
The integration of Confluent and the IBM Z mainframes, meanwhile, will allow organizations to “identify and drive real-time events at the transaction source as well as stream transactional data directly for real-time analytics, automation, and AI workflows,” the company said. That will enable mission-critical transaction processing systems to be more tightly integrated—in real-time—with the rest of a business IT environment.
And IBM said the combination of Confluent and the IBM MQ and IBM webMethods Hybrid Integration systems “extends this platform with high-scale event streaming, enabling applications, APIs, and AI agents to sense and act on business events in real time.”
“Since our founding, Confluent’s mission has been to set the world’s data in motion, making data streaming as foundational to the enterprise as the database. Joining IBM allows us to accelerate that mission at a much greater scale,” said Confluent co-founder and CEO Jay Kreps in a statement.
“IBM’s global reach and deep enterprise relationships will help us go further, faster. As enterprises move from experimenting with AI to running their business on it, helping data flow continuously across the business has never mattered more. I’m excited to see what we’ll build together,” Kreps said.
Confluent, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., was founded in 2014 by former LinkedIn engineers Kreps, Jun Rao and Neha Narkhede who developed the Apache Kafka open-source data and event streaming platform that Confluent’s products were built on.
Confluent works with a significant number of channel partners and over the last two-plus years has launched partner programs for ISVs, systems integrators, OEMs and MSPs. In July 2025 the company committed to investing $200 million over the next three years to expand the reach and capabilities of its global partner ecosystem.
Just last month Confluent launched its “Sell with Confluent” initiative to help system integrator and solution provider partners streamline cloud resell deals with automated price quotes, instant approvals and co-marketing funds.
