Confluent Acquisition, Valuation & Financials
Confluent was acquired by IBM for $11B in December 2025, a 10.0x multiple on $1.1B of revenue.
Confluent revenue at acquisition
$1.1B
Last twelve months · Dec 2025
Confluent revenue multiple at acquisition
10.0x
EV/Revenue · Dec 2025
Confluent EBITDA multiple before the deal
88.3x
EV/EBITDA · last month listed · Jan 2026
About Confluent
Confluent Inc operates in the Data Streaming Platform category, setting data in motion to power real time operations, analytics, and artificial intelligence AI. The Company has built a comprehensive platform that enables organizations to stream, connect, process, and govern data in motion across the enterprise. The Data Streaming Platform links applications, systems, and data layers into real time data streams, supporting real time decision making, autonomous agents, and generative AI applications. The platform delivers four key capabilities, Stream, Connect, Process, and Govern, with streaming as the foundation for continuous real time data movement. The Company operates in the United States and international markets, with the majority of revenue coming from the United States.
Founded
2014
HQ
San Francisco, CAWebsite
Status
Acquired
Customer focus
B2B
Revenue model
Subscription
Revenue
$177M (Apr 2020)
Valuation
$4.5B (Apr 2020)
Confluent Acquisition
Confluent was acquired by IBM for $11B on 8 December 2025.
The acquisition price implies a 10.0x revenue multiple on $1.1B of revenue.
Before the acquisition Confluent had raised $456M across 5 funding rounds.
Confluent, headquartered in Mountain View, California, provides a leading open-source enterprise data streaming platform based on Apache Kafka that connects, processes, and governs reusable data and events in real time, serving over 6,500 enterprises including 40% of the Fortune 500 and partnering with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud. IBM, the Armonk, New York-based technology giant, completed its acquisition of Confluent on March 17, 2026, acquiring all issued and outstanding common shares for $31 per share in cash with available cash on hand, representing an enterprise value of $11 billion at a 34% premium. The deal, announced December 9, 2025, received approvals from both boards, Confluent's independent special committee, and largest shareholders holding 62% voting power, and cleared regulatory and shareholder conditions by mid-2026. The acquisition advances IBM's hybrid cloud and AI strategy by integrating Confluent's real-time data capabilities into its Data and Automation portfolio, watsonx AI products, and consulting services, enabling end-to-end data flow for generative and agentic AI across public/private clouds, datacenters, applications, and APIs. Strategic rationale includes complementing prior open-source acquisitions like Red Hat and the $6.4 billion HashiCorp deal in February 2025, driving product synergies, accelerating revenue growth via IBM's go-to-market in 175 countries, and achieving operational efficiencies; the deal is accretive to adjusted EBITDA in the first full year and free cash flow in the second post-close. Confluent CEO Jay Kreps joined IBM, emphasizing acceleration of its mission to make data streaming foundational for enterprise AI at global scale. Context includes Confluent's Q3 2025 report of 24% cloud growth and Flink momentum, positioning it as the context layer for production AI amid enterprise shifts from batch to real-time architectures, with analysts noting it reasserts IBM's leadership in software infrastructure critical for autonomous agents requiring timely data access.
| Acquirer | Date | Type | Price | EV/Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Dec 2025 | Strategic M&A | $11B | 10.0x |
Confluent as a Public Company
Confluent traded as HAM: 8QR before it was taken private. Its acquisition was announced in December 2025. January 2026 is its last month on record as a listed company, with a market cap of $11B and an enterprise value of $10B.
Last-twelve-month revenue was $1.2B, with EBITDA of $114M (10% margin), and the shares traded at 8.5x EV/Revenue and 88.3x EV/EBITDA.
Over the 4 years before that, its market cap fell from $18B in January 2022 to $11B, while revenue grew from $390M to $1.2B.
Confluent market cap while listed
Confluent EV/Revenue (LTM) while listed
| As of | Market cap | Revenue (LTM) | EBITDA (LTM) | EBITDA margin | EV/Revenue | EV/EBITDA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 2026 | $11B | $1.2B | $114M | 10% | 8.5x | 88.3x |
| Jan 2025 | $9.9B | $976M | $46M | 5% | 9.4x | 197.6x |
| Jan 2024 | $7B | $784M | ($51M) | -6% | 7.9x | (122.9x) |
| Jan 2023 | $6.7B | $601M | ($164M) | -27% | 9.8x | (35.8x) |
| Jan 2022 | $18B | $390M | ($168M) | -43% | 43.1x | (99.8x) |
Market cap, enterprise value and last-twelve-month figures are month-end values, up to the last month Confluent traded.
Confluent Valuation
Confluent is currently valued at $4.5B, based on its Series E in April 2020.
The $250M round was led by Coatue, with participation from Putnam Premier IT, Index Ventures, Durable Capital Partners, Altimeter Capital and Sequoia Capital.
Confluent's valuation has grown 9.0x from $500M at its Series C in March 2017 to $4.5B in April 2020, across 3 priced rounds.
Confluent valuation by funding round
Revenue multiple| Date | Stage | Valuation | Revenue Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 2020 | Series E | $4.5B | 25.4x |
| Jan 2019 | Series D | $2.5B | - |
| Mar 2017 | Series C | $500M | - |
Confluent Revenue
Confluent's latest recorded revenue is $177M, as of its Series E in April 2020. At a $4.5B valuation, that implies a 25.4x revenue multiple.
Confluent revenue by funding round
| Date | Revenue * | Valuation | Revenue Multiple | Stage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 2020 | $177M | $4.5B | 25.4x | Series E |
* Revenue (or ARR) figures are the values recorded alongside each funding round. Typically run-rate revenue at the time of the deal, or a reported LTM (last 12 months) revenue.
Confluent Funding History
Confluent has raised a total of $456M across 5 funding rounds.
Confluent's first fundraising round was a $7M Series A in November 2014. The most recent completed round was a $250M Series E in April 2020.
Confluent funding rounds
| Date | Stage | Investors | Raised | Valuation | Deal Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 2020 | Series E | Coatue (lead); Putnam Premier IT; Index Ventures; Durable Capital Partners; Altimeter Capital; Sequoia Capital | $250M | $4.5B | Confluent, the data streaming platform built on Apache Kafka, provides Confluent Platform and Confluent Cloud offerings to enable organizations to manage continuously flowing data. In 2020, total revenue reached $262.7 million LTM as of the IPO period, with Confluent Platform revenue at $177.2 million (up 53% year-over-year) and Confluent Cloud revenue at $31.4 million (up 117% year-over-year). For Q1 2021 (ended March 31, 2021), revenue was approximately $67.8 million implied from segment growth, with Platform at $54.1 million (up 43%) and Cloud at $13.9 million (up 124%). Confluent had over 2,500 customers by IPO, with 560+ at $100K+ ARR and 60 at $1M+ ARR, achieving 117% dollar-based net retention and 70% non-GAAP gross margins. The company demonstrated strong growth with implied ARR at $272 million as of the last pre-IPO quarter (up 55% YoY), adding $96.2 million net new ARR over the prior year. Sales efficiency showed a median 21-month payback period, though impacted by COVID in early 2020. Revenue was 88% subscription-based, with international sales at 34-36%. Confluent went public post-2020, listing as CFLT, with accumulated deficits reflecting heavy growth investments. |
| Jan 2019 | Series D | Sequoia Capital (lead); Index Ventures; Benchmark | $125M | $2.5B | Confluent is the commercial entity built on the open-source Apache Kafka project, providing a paid distribution that extends core Kafka features with modules for real-time analysis, application orchestration, and development tools. The platform includes KSQL, a cloud-based streaming database with Sequential Query Language capabilities for data ingestion, filtering, aggregation, and transformation. Confluent announced a $125 million Series D funding round on January 23, 2019, led by Sequoia Capital with participation from existing investors Index Ventures and Benchmark, bringing total raised to $206 million at that time. The round valued the company at $2.5 billion post-money, a significant increase from the prior round valuation of $500 million. In 2018, Confluent roughly doubled its team, launched its cloud offering on AWS and Google Cloud Platform, and grew subscription bookings 3.5x year-over-year. By April 2020, the company raised an additional $250 million Series E round at a $4.5 billion valuation, having doubled its annual recurring revenue year-over-year in 2019 and grown Confluent Cloud revenue by over 450 percent. The company went public via IPO in June 2021. |
| Mar 2017 | Series C | Sequoia Capital (lead); Index Ventures; Benchmark | $50M | $500M | Confluent, the commercial company built on the open-source Apache Kafka streaming platform, raised a $50 million Series C round announced on March 7, 2017, led by Sequoia Capital with participation from existing investors Benchmark and Index Ventures. Sequoia's Matt Miller joined the board. This round brought total funding to $80 million following prior Series A ($6.9M in 2014 led by Benchmark) and Series B ($24M in 2015 led by Index Ventures). The funding aimed to accelerate adoption of streaming platforms, expand globally, and meet demand for real-time data processing across industries, supporting use cases like IoT, real-time analytics, and microservices. In 2016, Confluent achieved over 700% year-over-year growth in ACV subscription bookings, nearly tripled headcount, opened an EMEA headquarters in London, and added enterprise customers including Priceline.com, Surescripts, TiVo, and Zopa. Customers like Netflix, Uber, Cisco, and Goldman Sachs used Kafka as a core system. The platform enabled real-time event streaming, contrasting with batch processing, and was positioned for multi-cloud and on-premises deployments. TechCrunch later reported in 2019 that Confluent's valuation in the March 2017 round was $500 million, which increased fivefold to $2.5 billion in the subsequent $125 million Series D in January 2019 led by Sequoia, with Benchmark and Index Ventures participating, bringing total funding to $206 million. Confluent eyed potential IPO paths while building independently. |
| Jul 2015 | Series B | Index Ventures (lead); Benchmark | $24M | - | Confluent, founded by the original creators of Apache Kafka, is a streaming data platform company that helps organizations process live data in real time. The company raised $24 million in Series B funding on July 8, 2015, led by Index Ventures with participation from existing investor Benchmark. This brought total funding raised to date to $31 million. The funding was intended to expand Apache Kafka technology, augment live data capabilities, and grow the engineering team. Index Ventures partner Mike Volpi joined Confluent's board as part of the investment. By the time of the Series C round in March 2017, the company had achieved over 700 percent annual contract value subscription bookings growth year over year in 2016 and had tripled its employee count. The company went on to raise a $50 million Series C from Sequoia Capital in March 2017 and a $125 million Series D in January 2019, reaching a $2.5 billion valuation at that stage. |
| Nov 2014 | Series A | Benchmark (lead); LinkedIn; DCVC | $7M | - | Confluent, founded by LinkedIn alumni Jay Kreps, Neha Narkhede, and Jun Rao who created Apache Kafka, raised $6.9 million in a Series A funding round in November 2014 led by Benchmark, with participation from LinkedIn and Data Collective (DCVC). The company builds commercial tools around the open-source Apache Kafka software to enable real-time data processing and unify data from multiple sources in a scalable, low-latency manner. Benchmark partner Eric Vishria joined the board, highlighting the team's expertise in solving big data challenges for enterprises. |
Who has invested in Confluent?
9 investors have backed Confluent across its funding rounds, including Index Ventures, Benchmark, Sequoia Capital, Coatue, DCVC and Putnam Premier IT.
Lead investors include Coatue, Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures and Benchmark.
Confluent Investors
| Investor | HQ | Rounds | Role | First check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 London | 4 | Lead | Jul 2015 | |
| San Francisco, CA | 4 | Lead | Nov 2014 | |
| San Francisco, CA | 3 | Lead | Mar 2017 | |
| United States | 1 | Participant | Apr 2020 | |
| San Francisco, CA | 1 | Participant | Nov 2014 | |
| Washington, DC | 1 | Participant | Apr 2020 | |
| San Francisco, CA | 1 | Participant | Apr 2020 | |
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Start Free TrialAcquisitions by Confluent
Confluent has acquired 4 companies to date.
Last acquisition by Confluent was on September 11th 2024. Confluent acquired WarpStream Labs for $220M.
Latest Acquisitions by Confluent
| Description | WarpStream Labs is a provider of a cloud-native streaming platform compatible with Apache Kafka protocols using object storage backends like AWS S3. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company eliminates local disk requirements and reduces cross-AZ data transfer costs. WarpStream supports the Bring Your Own Cloud model integrated with Confluent Platform for enterprise Kafka management in VPCs. | WarpStream Labs is a provider of a cloud-native streaming platform compatible with Apache Kafka protocols using object storage backends like AWS S3. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company eliminates local disk requirements and reduces cross-AZ data transfer costs. WarpStream supports the Bring Your Own Cloud model integrated with Confluent Platform for enterprise Kafka management in VPCs. | Immerok is a cloud platform provider launched in 2022 that simplifies deployment and management of Apache Flink streaming applications. The service caters to developers building real-time data pipelines for enterprises in finance, e-commerce, and telecommunications. Backed by venture investors, the distributed team of Flink specialists operates from multiple locations worldwide, emphasizing scalability and operational reliability. | Distributed Masonry is a developer of real-time data storage and streaming products including Pyroscope for continuous profiling. The company publishes technical articles and resources on performance optimization and observability. |
| HQ Country | | |  | |
| HQ City | Chicago, IL | Chicago, IL | Berlin | Seattle, WA |
| Deal Date | 11 Sep 2024 | 9 Sep 2024 | 6 Jan 2023 | 2 Aug 2018 |
| Valuation | $220M | $220M | $55M | undisclosed |
| EV/Revenue | ||||
| EV/EBITDA | ||||
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Investments by Confluent
Confluent has invested in 1 company to date.
Latest investment by Confluent was on March 19th 2024. Confluent invested in TwinLabs.ai in their $500K Seed round.
Latest Investments by Confluent
| Description | - |
| HQ Country | |
| HQ City | - |
| Deal Date | 19 Mar 2024 |
| Round | Seed |
| Raised | $500K |
| Investors | - |
| Valuation | undisclosed |
| EV/Revenue | |
| EV/EBITDA | |
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Confluent Competitors
Confluent competitors include listed companies like MongoDB, Oracle Corp Japan, Nutanix and Dameng Database, and private ones like Harness and Eon.
| Company | HQ | Status | Revenue | EBITDA | Valuation | Revenue Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Publicly listed | $2.5B | ($104M) | $32B | 10.4x | |
 Japan | Publicly listed | $1.8B | $589M | $7.7B | 3.9x | |
| United States | Publicly listed | $2.5B | $230M | $19B | 6.2x | |
| San Francisco, CA | Private | $250M | - | $5.5B | 22.0x | |
| New York City, NY | Private | - | - | $4B | - | |
 China | Publicly listed | $195M | $84M | $3.4B | 12.5x |
Confluent Public Comps
Confluent is no longer listed, but its public comps include JFrog, GoDaddy, Elastic, GitLab, Oracle Corp Japan, Applied Digital, Computacenter, CGI, Akamai and DigitalOcean.
| Last FY | EV/Revenue | EV/EBITDA | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | EBITDA | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | |
| $532M | ($67M) | 20.3x | 17.4x | (159.9x) | 88.4x | |||
| $5B | $1.3B | 3.1x | 2.9x | 11.7x | 8.9x | |||
| $1.7B | $35M | 4.9x | 4.6x | 244.4x | 25.5x | |||
| $955M | ($82M) | 7.5x | 6.7x | (87.0x) | 44.3x | |||
| $1.8B | $589M | 3.9x | 3.9x | 12.1x | 12.2x | |||
| $611M | ($85M) | 21.3x | 20.1x | (154.0x) | 78.1x | |||
| $12B | $440M | 0.6x | 0.4x | 16.5x | 12.0x | |||
| $11B | $2B | 1.5x | 1.5x | 8.6x | 7.3x | |||
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Common questions about Confluent
| When was Confluent founded? | Confluent was founded in 2014. |
| Where is Confluent headquartered? | Confluent is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, United States. |
| Is Confluent publicly listed? | No, Confluent was acquired by IBM in December 2025. |
| Who acquired Confluent? | Confluent was acquired by IBM in December 2025. |
| How much was Confluent acquired for? | Confluent was acquired for $11B in December 2025, a 10.0x revenue multiple. |
| What is Confluent's valuation? | Confluent was last valued at $4.5B in its Series E in April 2020. |
| How much funding has Confluent raised? | Confluent has raised $456M across 5 funding rounds. |
| What was Confluent's last funding round? | Confluent's last funding round was a $250M Series E in April 2020, led by Coatue. |
| Who are Confluent's investors? | Confluent's investors include Index Ventures, Benchmark, Sequoia Capital, Putnam Premier IT, LinkedIn, Durable Capital Partners, Altimeter Capital, DCVC and Coatue. |
| What is Confluent's revenue? | Confluent's latest recorded revenue is $177M (April 2020). |
| What is Confluent's revenue multiple? | Confluent's latest valuation implies a 25.4x revenue multiple ($4.5B valuation on $177M of revenue). |
| Which companies are comparable to Confluent? | Companies comparable to Confluent include MongoDB, Oracle Corp Japan, Nutanix, Harness, Eon and Dameng Database. |
| What was Confluent's market cap before the acquisition? | Confluent had a market cap of $11B in January 2026, its last month on record as a listed company, trading at 8.5x EV/Revenue. |
| What was Confluent's revenue as a public company? | Confluent's last reported twelve-month revenue was $1.2B (January 2026), with EBITDA of $114M. |
| How many companies has Confluent acquired? | Confluent has acquired 3 companies, including WarpStream Labs, Immerok and Distributed Masonry. |
| What was the largest acquisition by Confluent? | The $220M acquisition of WarpStream Labs in September 2024 is the largest acquisition Confluent has made to date. |
| How many companies has Confluent invested in? | Confluent has invested in 1 company, including TwinLabs.ai. |
| What was Confluent's last investment? | In March 2024, Confluent invested in TwinLabs.ai's $500K seed round. |
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