Singapore – IBM has completed its acquisition of Confluent, a provider of data streaming technology used by more than 6,500 organisations globally, including a significant proportion of Fortune 500 firms. The combined offering is positioned as an integrated data platform designed to supply AI models, agents, and automated processes with continuous, reliable data across on-premises and hybrid cloud environments.
As organisations transition from testing AI to deploying it at scale, the availability of timely, governed, and high-quality data has emerged as a central challenge. In many cases, enterprise data remains fragmented across systems and environments, with delays in availability limiting its effectiveness. The integration of Confluent’s streaming capabilities with IBM’s software portfolio is intended to address these limitations by enabling consistent, real-time data flow with built-in governance and oversight.
“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,” Rob Thomas, senior vice president and chief commercial officer of IBM Software, stated.
“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.”
Confluent’s technology is built on Apache Kafka, a widely adopted standard for data streaming. Its solutions are used across industries, including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail, supporting use cases such as real-time inventory management, supply chain visibility, and connected operations.
The integration also introduces enhancements across IBM’s product portfolio. These include the ability to stream operational data into its AI and analytics platforms, enabling models and workflows to operate on continuously updated datasets with governance controls.
The combined capabilities are also expected to extend to mainframe environments, allowing transactional data to be processed and analysed in real time, as well as supporting event-driven automation across hybrid systems through existing integration and messaging tools.
Industry analysis highlights that enterprise adoption of AI at scale is increasingly dependent on architectures capable of delivering real-time operational data rather than static or historical datasets. The combined capabilities of IBM’s data governance and infrastructure solutions with Confluent’s streaming platform are intended to address both data management and data movement requirements within a single ecosystem.
“AI agents and automated workflows don’t operate on historical data; they require live operational signals, continuously flowing across the enterprise as events occur,” Sanjeev Mohan, principal analyst of SanjMo, commented.
“IBM has made significant progress assembling a portfolio that addresses both sides of this equation: governance and infrastructure for data at rest, and a platform for data in motion.”
Under the terms of the transaction, IBM has acquired all outstanding shares of Confluent at a price of US$31 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately US$11b.
