Confluent $CFLT ( 0.0% ) woke up in rocket mode on Monday, jumping 28 percent in premarket trading after a Wall Street Journal report said IBM $IBM ( ▲ 0.52% ) is close to sealing an acquisition worth about $11 billion. People familiar with the talks say an announcement could land as early as today, although nothing is officially locked in.
If that price tag is tied to equity value, IBM would be paying roughly a 35 percent premium to Confluent’s Friday close. The company was valued at $8.14 billion heading into the weekend, so the rumored offer would mark a sizable bump for the real-time data-infrastructure platform that’s become a go-to tool for feeding large AI models.
IBM’s stock barely moved on the report, but the deal would be its largest in years. The company has been trying to bolster cloud and AI-related services after growth in its core cloud software business slowed last quarter. An acquisition of Confluent would fit that strategy neatly, giving IBM a deeper foothold in the data plumbing that modern AI depends on.