Confluent Announces Intent to Acquire Immerok to Accelerate the Development of a Cloud Native Apache Flink Offering

US-headquartered Confluent, Inc., the data streaming pioneer, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Immerok. Immerok is a leading contributor to Apache Flink, a powerful technology for building stream processing applications and one of the most popular Apache open-source projects. Immerok has developed a cloud-native, fully managed Flink service for customers looking to process data streams at a large scale and to deliver real-time analytical insight. Immerok leadership includes multiple Flink Project Management Committee members and Committers for the open-source technology, and would add extensive stream processing expertise to the Confluent team upon the closing of the transaction. Immerok's investors have included Cusp Capital, 468 Capital and Cortical Ventures.

With Immerok, Confluent plans to accelerate the launch of a fully managed Flink offering that is compatible with its market leading managed Kafka service, Confluent Cloud. Thanks to Flink, Kafka Streams, and ksqlDB offerings available natively on Confluent, customers are expected to soon have access to the three leading stream processing tools designed specifically to process and enrich data in real time.

Data streaming is essential to competing in today's digital-first world, enabling businesses to connect their many different applications, data systems, and SaaS layers in real time. With a unified and constantly up-to-date view of their data, businesses can deliver streamlined workflows, more automation, and ultimately, superior customer experiences and more efficient business operations.

"Stream processing plays a particularly critical role in data streaming," said Jay Kreps, Co-founder and CEO, Confluent. "Stream processing enables organizations to clean and enrich data streams to derive actionable insights from their data in real time. Our planned acquisition of Immerok will accelerate our ability to bring one of the most popular and powerful stream processing engines directly into Confluent. Soon, customers will be able to leverage the power of Apache Flink natively in Confluent to quickly and easily build the real time applications that are required to win."

While many different stream processing technologies exist today, developers are increasingly turning to Flink. In addition to its exceptional performance and rich feature set, Flink boasts a robust developer community, is the third highest repo by commits, and supports mission-critical use cases at innovative companies like Uber, Apple, Netflix, and Goldman Sachs.

"I'm deeply excited about the opportunity to combine our deep Flink expertise with the worlds foremost Kafka experts," said Holger Temme, Co-founder and CEO, Immerok. "Together, we can deliver a cloud-native data streaming platform that gives customers the combined power of the best of the stream processing layer, with the best of the data movement and storage layer, so they can unlock new insights from data in real time."

Additionally, Immerok's leadership and core engineering team leads all the way back to the original creators of Apache Flink and with it brings unparalleled knowledge and experience to Confluent. A public preview of the Flink offering for Confluent Cloud is planned for 2023. Confluent's initial focus will be to build an exceptional Apache Flink service for Confluent Cloud, bringing a cloud-native experience that delivers the same simplicity, security and scalability for Flink that customers have come to expect from Confluent for Kafka.

Additional resources

• Read Jay Kreps' blog post for more information about Confluent's acquisition of Immerok: confluent.io/blog/cloud-kafka-meets-cloud-flink-with-confluent-and-immerok/

• Learn more about Confluent: www.confluent.io

• See how Confluent is helping its customers transform their businesses: www.confluent.io/customers/

• Join Confluent and apply for one of its open positions: www.confluent.io/careers/
  

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding Confluent's data streaming technology, the expected timing of and benefits from Confluent's acquisition of Immerok, the timing for launching new product offerings, capabilities of new product offerings, performance of new product offerings compared to open-source alternatives, and expected benefits of product offerings for Confluent's customers. The words "believe," "may," "will," "estimate," "continue," "anticipate," "intend," "expect," "plan," "project," "target," "look to," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements represent Confluent's current beliefs, estimates and assumptions only as of the date of this press release, and information contained in this press release should not be relied upon as representing Confluent's estimates as of any subsequent date. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If the risks materialize or assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not limited to: (i) Confluent's limited operating history, including in uncertain macroeconomic environments, (ii) Confluent's ability to consummate the Immerok acquisition and to integrate Immerok following the acquisition; (iii) Confluent's ability to sustain and manage its rapid growth, (iv) Confluent's ability to attract new customers and retain and sell additional features and services to existing customers, (v) inflationary conditions, economic uncertainty, recessionary risks, and exchange rate fluctuations, which may result in customer pullback in information technology spending, lengthening of sales cycles, reduced contract sizes, reduced consumption of Confluent Cloud or customer preference for open source alternatives, (vi) Confluent's ability to increase consumption of its offering, including by existing customers and through the acquisition of new customers, and successfully add new features and functionality to its offering, (vii) Confluent's ability to achieve or sustain profitability and improve margins annually or at all, (viii) the estimated addressable market opportunity for Confluent's offering, (ix) Confluent's ability to compete effectively in an increasingly competitive market, including achieving market acceptance over competitors and open source alternatives, (x) Confluent's ability to successfully execute its go-to-market strategy and initiatives, (xi) Confluent's ability to attract and retain highly qualified personnel, (xii) breaches in Confluent's security measures or unauthorized access to its platform, data, or customers' or other users' personal data, (xiii) Confluent's reliance on third-party cloud-based infrastructure to host Confluent Cloud, and (xiv) general market, political, economic, and business conditions. These risks are not exhaustive. Further information on these and other risks that could affect Confluent's results is included in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including Confluent's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2022, and its future reports that it may file from time to time with the SEC. Confluent assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

About Confluent

Confluent is the data streaming platform that is pioneering a fundamentally new category of data infrastructure that sets data in motion. Confluent's cloud-native offering is the foundational platform for data in motion - designed to be the intelligent connective tissue enabling real-time data, from multiple sources, to constantly stream across the organization. With Confluent, organizations can meet the new business imperative of delivering rich, digital front-end customer experiences and transitioning to sophisticated, real-time, software-driven backend operations.

To learn more, please visit www.confluent.io.

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