Dec 8 (Reuters) – IBM said on Monday it will buy data infrastructure company Confluent in a deal valued at $11 billion, ramping up its cloud-computing offerings to capitalize on an AI-driven demand boom. Big Blue's shares fell more than 2% in premarket trading. The offer price of $31 per share represents an about 50% premium to Confluent's closing price of $20.73 on October 7 – the last trading session before Reuters first reported its exploration of a sale after attracting acquisition interest. IBM has doubled down on M&As to beef up its cloud and software products – a high-growth, high-margin area – as customers invest in upgrading digital infrastructure to house complex artificial intelligence applications. In April last year, IBM bought cloud firm HashiCorp in a deal valued at $6.4 billion, as the company emphasizes inorganic growth under CEO Arvind Krishna. Mountain View, California-based Confluent provides technology needed to manage massive, real-time data streams for artificial intelligence models. IBM will fund the deal with cash on hand and the transaction is expected to close by the middle of 2026. (Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
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