markets

Claire Yubin Oh12/8/25

Confluent soars on IBM’s $11 billion all-cash acquisition

Confluent went vertical in premarket trading on Monday before trading was halted as IBM announced that it’s acquiring the data infrastructure company for $11 billion to create a “Smart Data Platform for Enterprise Generative AI.”

IBM will acquire Confluent for $31 per share in cash for all issued and outstanding common shares of the company, representing a ~35% premium to Confluent’s Friday close, which pegged the company at a $8.14 billion market cap. The transaction is expected to close by the middle of 2026.

“With the acquisition of Confluent, IBM will provide the smart data platform for enterprise IT, purpose-built for AI,” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in the press release. The deal builds on IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI strategy, bullish that global data will more than double and over 1 billion new applications will emerge by 2028 from the continued adoption of AI. Confluent is a open-source platform that processes real-time data often used for big AI models.

IBM is down 1% on the news, though the latest acquisition marks the biggest deal for the tech giant in recent years, as the company works to increase spending on cloud and AI-related services after growth slowed down in its core cloud software business last quarter.

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J. Edward Moreno7/7/26

SpaceX gets a wave of bullish ratings from Wall Street analysts

SpaceX received more than a dozen positive analyst calls on Tuesday — including from major Wall Street banks — as they initiate coverage on Elon Musk’s space and AI company.

SpaceX went public on June 12 at a $2.2 trillion valuation, the largest debut in history. While the company hasn’t yet posted a profit, it seems to have convinced Wall Street that it will get there and grow its valuation on the way.

Of the at least 17 analysts that gave a rating on Tuesday, all but one gave it a “buy” or “outperform” rating. MoffettNathanson was "neutral."

The ratings come as SpaceX joined the Nasdaq 100 index, a benchmark tech-heavy basket of companies that underpins millions of portfolios. The inclusion adds built-in demand for the stock from index funds and ETFs.

Still, SpaceX fell more than 5% on Tuesday amid a broader sell-off, and is currently effectively flat from its opening price of $150 a share.

US job growth falls far short of estimates in June; unemployment rate unexpectedly dips to 4.2%

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Meta surges on report it’s starting a cloud business to sell excess AI compute

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