IBM’s $11B Deal Sends Confluent (CFLT) Into the Spotlight as Analysts Stay Bullish

Confluent, Inc. (NASDAQ:CFLT) is Hot AI Stocks on Wall Street’s Radar. On December 9, Bernstein reiterated an “Outperform” rating on the stock with a $31.00 price target. The rating affirmation follows IBM’s announcement to acquire the company for $11 billion.

IBM announced Monday that it is acquiring data streaming platform Confluent. According to the release, the company will pay $31 per share in cash for all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Confluent.

In this regard, Bernstein commented how Confluent has long been an acquisition target owing to its relatively low multiple and strong market position.

Its attraction as a target deepened further after OpenAI committed to using the company’s leading open-source middleware technology, particularly Kafka and Flink, for its next-generation model infrastructure.

Bernstein noted that Confluent’s technology holds particular importance also because generative AI is more easily delivered in Cloud Native technology, such as web or mobile apps commonly built for Java VMs. The company also enjoys a very tight correlation to AWS, reinforcing its position in the tech landscape.