Confluent stock jumped Wednesday on a report that it is exploring a sale after attracting interest from potential acquirers.
The data software company is working with an investment bank to explore a sale, according to a Reuters report that cited unnamed sources. The report described the process as in the early stages. It was "instigated after both private equity firms and other technology companies expressed their interest," according to the report.
Confluent stock jumped nearly 10% to 22.77 in recent action on the stock market today. The company has a market capitalization of about $8 billion.
The company did not return a request for comment on the report.
Confluent Stock Struggles In 2025
Confluent offers data streaming software, which it describes as a central nervous system that helps enterprises instantly move and sort data. The 10-year-old company has previously attracted the attention of investors as an artificial intelligence play, given the huge data demands of generative AI models.
But the stock has had a rough year. Shares entered trading Wednesday down 26% year to date. The stock tumbled more than 30% following the company's second-quarter earnings report in late July, which including a sales outlook below the expectations of Wall Street analysts. Confluent executives told analysts at the time that customers were "optimizing" their cloud software spending in response to broader economic uncertainty.
Confluent will publish its third-quarter results on Oct. 27.
Piper Sandler analyst Rob Owens wrote to clients Wednesday that he is not surprised by the report but that a transaction would likely take multiple months or quarters.
"Confluent offers unique and compelling technology that we believe would potentially be of interest to multiple different parties," Owens wrote. He rates Confluent as overweight, or buy.
Owens added that Confluent stock's current valuation to its estimated 2026 revenue "does not reflect the longer-term potential opportunity the company has ahead of it."
Meanwhile, some of Confluent's data software peers moved higher in Wednesday's stock market action. Elastic gained 1.8% to 81.83. MongoDB was up just under 1% in recent action at 320.72.
AI Boosts Data Software Dealmaking
The reported interest in Confluent comes as dealmaking in the data software space is heating up, as one analyst noted.
"Over the last year, technology companies have made several acquisitions to bolster their data platform capabilities that also demonstrate the (a) growing focus on combining operational and analytical estates, and (b) need for real-time analytics for AI use cases," Evercore ISI analyst Chirag Ved wrote to clients Wednesday.
Ved pointed to the $8 billion deal for data-management company Informatica by Salesforce, which was announced in May. In June, Snowflake said it would acquire database startup Crunchy Data for a reported $250 million. That deal was seen as a response to Databricks' $1 billion acquisition of Neon, a database startup.
