IBM announced Monday it is acquiring data streaming platform Confluent in a deal valued at $11 billion.
Shares of Confluent soared 29%. IBM's stock closed little changed.
"Data, and especially real-time data, is incredibly important to how an enterprise functions," IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Monday. "Nobody can live with month-old data, or even week-old data, and Confluent has the most capable technology to unlock the real-time value of data."
Krishna said Confluent will be part of its software unit.
IBM will pay $31 per share in cash for all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Confluent, according to a release. The transaction is expected to close by the middle of 2026. Shares of Confluent closed at $23.14 on Friday.
"With the acquisition of Confluent, IBM will provide the smart data platform for enterprise IT, purpose-built for AI," Krishna said in a release.
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IBM said the deal will bolster its artificial intelligence offerings as it expects global data growth to more than double by 2028, with the movement into AI agents accelerating in 2026.
"I think this ability to now have one layer, one control plane, where people can manage to give data to the AI agents, but still manage to make sure that it's done with the correct security and the correct controls, I think, is going to unlock a lot," Krishna told CNBC.
Wedbush called it a "strong move" from IBM that adds more data processing capabilities to its hybrid cloud ecosystem and is a natural fit to help eliminate data silos for powering AI.
"We loudly applaud this deal as Arvind takes IBM further into the AI Revolution with more acquisitions likely ahead," the analysts said in a note.
Wedbush maintained its overweight rating on IBM and $325 price target. IBM closed at $307.94 on Friday.
The addition of Confluent fits with IBM's deal last year to land cloud software maker HashiCorp for $6.4 billion and the 2023 move to acquire Apptio in a deal valued at $4.6 billion. Both of those acquisitions were all-cash deals.
Confluent has more than 6,500 clients across major industries and works with Anthropic, Amazon's AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft, Snowflake and others.
Confluent one-day stock chart.