IBM is buying data infrastructure company Confluent for $11 billion in cash in a bid to bolster its data and automation products as ever more companies move their tech operations to the cloud and deploy AI technology.
The tech giant said it would offer $31 for each Confluent share, which is about 50% more than what the smaller company’s shares closed at on Friday, before news of the deal.
Confluent offers a platform that helps enterprises manage streams of data in real time, a use case that’s exploded in demand as ever more companies develop and deploy AI products, which require significant back-and-forth processing of data for inferencing.
IBM said Confluent will complement its existing data and automation products, as well as improve upon its existing offerings across AI, automation, data, and consulting. The company expects the deal to add to EBITDA and free cash flow in the two years after the deal is closed.
This is the latest in a string of deals IBM has struck in recent months as it seeks to capitalize on the AI boom, though at $11 billion, Confluent would be the tech giant’s largest buy in years, following its acquisition of HashiCorp in 2024.
IBM in October signed a deal with AI lab Anthropic to deploy the Claude large language model into some of its products; it has partnered with AMD to develop a new computing architecture that combines quantum systems with AI-specialized chips; and it acquired data analysis startup Seek AI in June.
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