International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is buying data-streaming platform Confluent in a bid to bolster its AI offerings.<\/p>\n
The deal, worth $11 billion (\u20ac9.44bn) in total, will see IBM pay $31 per share in cash, a premium of around 34% on Confluent’s Friday closing price.<\/p>\n
The transaction is set to be completed by mid-2026, according to a statement released on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIBM and Confluent together will enable enterprises to deploy generative and agentic AI better and faster by providing trusted communication and data flow,\u201d said Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM.<\/p>\n
Jay Kreps, CEO of Confluent, added: \u201cWe are excited by the potential to join IBM and to accelerate our strategy with IBM\u2019s go-to-market expertise, global scale and extensive portfolio.\u201d<\/p>\n
Related<\/p>\n
Data streaming platform Confluent is responsible for the technical infrastructure that underpins AI systems.<\/p>\n
More specifically, Confluent allows companies to rapidly move and process information, providing technology that will be combined with IBM\u2019s own AI software.<\/p>\n
Confluent clients include ticket sales firm Ticketmaster, grocery delivery company Instacart, and tyre manufacturer Michelin.<\/p>\n
IBM said on Monday that it expects global data growth to more than double by 2028, amplified by the continued adoption of AI \u2014 increasing demands on IT departments.<\/p>\n
Under CEO Arvind Krishna, the company has been boosting its AI offerings and acquiring a number of software companies.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, IBM closed its acquisition of cloud firm HashiCorp in a deal valued at $6.4bn (\u20ac5.5bn). In its biggest deal to date, IBM also bought software firm Red Hat for about $34bn (\u20ac29.18bn) in 2019.<\/p>\n
Confluent had a market value of around $8bn (\u20ac6.87bn) as of Friday, while IBM\u2019s was around $290bn (\u20ac248.93bn).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is buying data-streaming platform Confluent in a bid to bolster its AI offerings.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,7946,111889,111890,75333,111,139,69,2685,145],"class_list":["post-173791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-arvind-krishna","tag-ceo-of-ibm","tag-confluent","tag-international-business-machines-corporation","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-offerings","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}