IBM agrees to acquire Confluent for $11 billion in all-cash deal

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced it will acquire data streaming company Confluent Inc. (CFLT) for $31 per share in cash, representing an enterprise value of $11 billion. The transaction is expected to close by mid-2026, subject to regulatory approvals and Confluent shareholder approval.

Confluent shareholders holding approximately 62% of the voting power have agreed to vote in favor of the transaction. Both companies’ boards of directors have approved the deal.

Confluent operates a data streaming platform built on Apache Kafka that connects and processes data in real time across enterprise systems. The company serves more than 6,500 clients, including over 40% of Fortune 500 companies.

“IBM and Confluent together will enable enterprises to deploy generative and agentic AI better and faster by providing trusted communication and data flow between environments, applications and APIs,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM chairman, president and CEO.

Jay Kreps, Confluent’s CEO and co-founder, said the company is “excited by the potential to join IBM and to accelerate our strategy with IBM’s go-to-market expertise, global scale and extensive portfolio.”

IBM expects the acquisition to be accretive to adjusted EBITDA within the first full year and to free cash flow in the second year after closing. The company will fund the purchase with available cash.

Mountain View, California-based Confluent reported a total addressable market that doubled from $50 billion to $100 billion over the past four years. The platform offers deployment options including fully managed cloud services, self-managed platforms, and hybrid solutions.