New Delhi, Dec. 8 -- IBM's strategic move to seize Confluent could redefine the AI data landscape.

International Business Machines Corporation, the century-old tech titan once dismissed as a relic of mainframe computing, stands on the cusp of one of its boldest gambits yet: an $11 billion acquisition of Confluent, founded in 2014 by LinkedIn engineers Jay Kreps, Neha Narkhede, and Jun Rao, the very architects of Apache Kafka. According to sources familiar with the matter cited by The Wall Street Journal, IBM is in advanced negotiations, with a potential announcement as early as Monday. This move, if consummated, would propel IBM deeper into the heart of artificial intelligence infrastructure, challenging the dominance of cloud hyperscale...