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Rob Thomas

Rob Thomas

Senior Vice President, Software and Chief Commercial Officer, IBM

Appears in 1 story

Notable Quotes

Rob Thomas has likened Confluent to “infrastructure powering the AI economy,” underscoring IBM’s view that real‑time data streams are as critical to AI as compute or models. ([ft.com](https://www.ft.com/content/8112d77f-2531-400f-b947-b506fe3c6b3f?utm_source=openai))

Stories

IBM’s $11 billion Confluent bet: owning the data arteries of enterprise AI

Money Moves

Public champion of Confluent as infrastructure for the AI economy

IBM has agreed to acquire Confluent, the data‑streaming company built around Apache Kafka, in an all‑cash deal for about $11 billion, or $31 per share, a roughly 34% premium to its last close. IBM says Confluent's real‑time event streaming and governance capabilities will anchor a new "smart data platform" that connects, cleans, and orchestrates data across hybrid clouds for generative and agentic AI applications. The deal positions IBM as both an AI model provider and the owner of the data plumbing that makes enterprise AI work.

Updated 6 days ago