Confluent
Part of IBM since 2026
Confluent is a Streaming & Messaging company founded in 2014 and based in Mountain View, United States. It has been part of IBM since 2026.
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Mountain View, United States, Confluent was built by Kafka co-founders Jay Kreps, Neha Narkhede and Jun Rao. Its core product, Confluent Cloud, is a fully managed data streaming service built on Apache Kafka and Apache Flink and powered by the Kora Kafka engine, offering serverless stream processing and consumption-based pricing. The company also offers Confluent Private Cloud, an on-premises deployment launched in October 2025 for regulated industries, and Confluent Intelligence, an AI-focused layer introduced in 2025 for feeding real-time data into production AI systems. Confluent raised a total of about $1.28 billion, including an IPO round in June 2021 of $828 million at a $9 billion valuation. IBM acquired the company on March 17, 2026 in a transaction valued at $11 billion, and Confluent now operates as an IBM company.
Confluent provides managed Apache Kafka and Apache Flink services used to move and process streaming data for enterprise pipelines, analytics and AI systems. Its Confluent Private Cloud offering targets finance, healthcare and government organizations that need to run streaming infrastructure on private infrastructure. The company raised about $1.28 billion before its acquisition by IBM for $11 billion in March 2026. Its Confluent Intelligence layer and IBM partnership position it as a link between streaming infrastructure and enterprise AI deployments.
At a glance
Total raised
$1.3B
Headcount
1k-5k
Headquarters
Mountain View
United StatesFounded
2014
Status
Subsidiary
Latest valuation
Funding history
Total raised
$1.3B
Rounds tracked
6
Latest stage
IPO
Latest valuation
$9B
| Date | Stage | Amount | Valuation | Lead investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 24, 2021 | IPO | $828M | $9B | — |
| Apr 21, 2020 | Series E | $250M | — |
