New York, United States - December 8, 2025 - IBM is in advanced negotiations to acquire data-streaming platform Confluent in a deal valued at roughly USD 11 billion, according to an exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal, which multiple outlets have since echoed.
The potential acquisition would mark one of IBM’s largest software-focused moves in recent years, deepening its push into hybrid cloud, AI data infrastructure, and enterprise integration workloads.
The WSJ report states that an announcement could come out soon, though the timeline remains fluid. Others, citing the same report, noted that it could not independently verify the details and that neither IBM nor Confluent has issued public statements or regulatory filings regarding the negotiations.
Confluent, founded by the original creators of Apache Kafka, provides real-time data-streaming technology used by banks, telecommunications providers, logistics platforms, and hyperscalers. Analysts say integrating Confluent’s event-streaming backbone into IBM’s stack, spanning Red Hat OpenShift, Cloud Pak solutions, and enterprise AI tooling, would significantly enhance IBM’s ability to support low-latency, high-throughput data pipelines essential for AI inference and real-time analytics at a global scale.
Market reaction was swift. Confluent’s shares rallied in after-hours trading following the Journal’s publication, as investors weighed the implications of a major strategic acquisition. MarketScreener and other financial outlets reported strong upward momentum amid speculation that a finalised deal could reposition IBM more competitively against cloud and data-platform rivals such as Microsoft, Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, and Google.
For IBM, the potential acquisition aligns with its broader transformation strategy. In 2024, the company completed several high-profile software deals, including the purchase of HashiCorp, which emphasised the shift toward subscription-based cloud tooling and enterprise automation. Analysts say Confluent would give IBM a deeper foothold in real-time data movement, a category increasingly tied to AI workloads, fraud detection, customer-experience systems, and distributed microservices architectures.
However, any agreement at this scale would require regulatory scrutiny in the United States and potentially the European Union, particularly as data-infrastructure consolidation accelerates globally. No regulatory submissions have yet been reported in public databases, and terms, including cash vs. stock structure, board approvals, or break clauses, remain unreported.
If completed, the deal would represent one of the most consequential moves in IBM’s AI-driven reinvention strategy, reshaping its data services portfolio and signalling continued consolidation in the real-time enterprise data market.
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