In Brief IBM is buying data infrastructure company Confluent for $11 billion in cash in a bid to bolster its data and automation products as ever more companies move their tech operations to the cloud and deploy AI technology.The tech giant said it would offer $31 for each Confluent share, which is about 50% more than what the smaller company’s shares closed at on Friday, before news of the deal. Confluent offers a platform that helps enterprises manage streams of data in real time, a use case that’s expl ...