Hua Er Jie Jian Wen·2025-12-08 08:55Group 1 - IBM is advancing one of its largest acquisition deals in history, aiming to accelerate its strategic transformation in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, with negotiations to acquire data infrastructure company Confluent for approximately $11 billion [1][2] - The acquisition of Confluent, which has a market value of about $8 billion, would be nearly double the size of IBM's previous acquisition of HashiCorp for $6.4 billion, highlighting IBM's aggressive push into the rapidly growing cloud and AI markets [2] - Confluent's technology focuses on real-time data stream management, essential for operating large AI models, as demand for real-time data processing capabilities is exponentially increasing with the acceleration of AI application deployment by enterprises [2][3] Group 2 - IBM is undergoing a significant restructuring, including plans to lay off thousands of employees by the end of the year, in line with other tech companies, to reposition its business for the AI era [1][2] - The company's strategy reflects a typical transformation path in the tech industry during the AI era: optimizing internal operations through AI technology, reducing traditional roles, and rapidly acquiring key technological capabilities through external mergers and acquisitions [2] - The tech sector has become one of the most active industries for mergers and acquisitions this year, with notable deals including Alphabet's $32 billion acquisition of Wiz and Palo Alto Networks' $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk [3]