Bank of America: IBM's acquisition of Confluent deeply aligns with AI and cloud strategic layout, software business growth rate may increase by 2%

Bank of America Corp announced on Monday that IBM (IBM.US) is planning to acquire Confluent (CFLT.US) at a price of $31 per share, a transaction that aligns well with this tech giant's existing cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) strategy. Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan stated in a client report, "We believe this acquisition is in line with IBM's AI strategy. Confluent, as a real-time data stream platform built on Apache Kafka, holds strategic value for enterprise customers looking to deploy generative AI, real-time applications, and modern workloads." Mohan further analyzed, "Confluent's technology will strengthen IBM's AI product portfolio, enabling customers still using traditional middleware tools to modernize their technical architecture. If the deal goes through as expected by mid-2026, we expect Confluent to contribute approximately $600 million in revenue to IBM between 2026 and 2027, boosting its software business growth by around 2 percentage points." Currently, Mohan rates IBM as a "buy" with a target price of $315. He added that this acquisition will generate synergies across multiple business lines: in the RedHat business segment, it will empower containerized applications; in the mainframe area, it will enhance real-time stream processing capabilities; and it will also increase the commercial value of the products Instana and Turbonomic, further solidifying the data ecosystem advantage of Kafka and Watson.x.