IBM close to buying Confluent in $11 billion deal: report

International Business Machines Corp. is in advanced negotiations to acquire data infrastructure firm Confluent for around $11 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

A deal, which would mark one of IBM’s biggest acquisitions in recent years, could be announced as early as Monday, the Journal said. Confluent, valued at about $8 billion, specialises in managing the data essential to AI development.

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Its shares surged 20% in Blue Ocean trading as of 11:50 a.m. in Singapore, with volumes exceeding the monthly average.

Dealmaking in the computing infrastructure arena has heated up, driven by demand for tools that help companies more efficiently organise and move data for AI applications.

Salesforce Inc. struck an $8 billion deal to acquire Informatica Inc. in May, while IBM completed the $6.4 billion purchase of HashiCorp Inc. in February.