IBM Confluent Deal And Claude Code Put AI Focus In View

• IBM (NYSE:IBM) is acquiring Confluent, a data streaming and analytics company, to deepen its AI and cloud computing offerings for enterprise clients.
• The deal is aimed at reinforcing IBM’s role in mission critical workloads across Fortune 500 customers that rely on real time data and hybrid cloud setups.
• Anthropic has launched Claude Code, a coding assistant that can work with legacy COBOL, a language central to many IBM mainframe environments.
• Claude Code introduces an external tool that can help modernize COBOL based systems, touching an area that has long been a core focus for IBM’s mainframe and consulting services.

For investors following IBM, these moves sit at the intersection of AI, data infrastructure, and long standing mainframe workloads. The Confluent acquisition directly ties into IBM’s push around AI and hybrid cloud, while Anthropic’s Claude Code highlights how third party AI tools are starting to address long running COBOL and legacy modernization needs.

Looking ahead, you may want to watch how IBM integrates Confluent into its existing software, consulting, and cloud portfolio, and how that compares with the capabilities clients can also access from tools like Claude Code. The balance between IBM’s in house offerings and external AI services could shape how the company positions itself with large enterprises that still depend heavily on mainframe and COBOL based systems.

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We’ve flagged 1 risk for International Business Machines. See which could impact your investment.

Quick Assessment

• ✅ Price vs Analyst Target: At US$245.28 against a consensus target of about US$321.95, the price sits roughly 24% below analyst expectations.
• ✅ Simply Wall St Valuation: Simply Wall St currently views IBM as trading about 34.3% below its estimated fair value, flagged as undervalued.
• ❌ Recent Momentum: The 30 day return of about 20% decline suggests weak short term momentum.

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Key Considerations

• 📊 The Confluent deal and IBM’s COBOL exposure mean this news directly ties IBM to data streaming, AI workloads and long running mainframe use cases.
• 📊 It may be useful to monitor how quickly Confluent is integrated into IBM’s software and consulting stack and whether clients use in house tools or external options such as Claude Code.
• ⚠️ With one flagged risk around higher debt levels, some investors may wish to track how acquisition financing affects IBM’s balance sheet over time.

Dig Deeper

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complete International Business Machines analysis. You can also visit the
community page for International Business Machines to see how other investors believe this latest news will impact the company’s narrative.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data
and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your
financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data.
Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.
Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

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