Big M&A streak
M&A activity surged — IBM closed its $11 billion acquisition of Confluent and Public Storage agreed to acquire National Storage Affiliates for about $10.5 billion in an all‑stock deal. The wave also includes Amazon’s purchase of Swiss robotics firm Rivr and Uber’s announced $1.25 billion investment in Rivian for robotaxi development. (x.com)
Day‑one technical integrations for the Confluent assets include IBM watsonx.data, IBM MQ, IBM webMethods Hybrid Integration and IBM Z, reflecting an immediate engineering plan to fold streaming into IBM’s existing enterprise stack. (newsroom.ibm.com) Confluent’s own notices to staff and public filings say the platform serves more than 6,500 enterprise customers, including roughly 40% of the Fortune 500, and Confluent CEO Jay Kreps told employees the move accelerates the company’s event‑driven data vision. (confluent.io) IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg that the company expects AI‑focused deals to continue and framed the Confluent integration as a step toward more transactions in a friendlier regulatory climate. (bloomberg.com) Public Storage’s agreement sets an exchange ratio of 0.14 of a PSA share or partnership unit for each NSA share or unit and used PSA’s March 13 closing price to imply an offer price per NSA share. (investors.publicstorage.com) The paperwork calls for a joint venture holding 313 NSA operating properties (about 19.6 million rentable square feet) capitalized with roughly $2.2 billion of property‑level secured debt and estimates PSA will wholly own 488 of NSA’s on‑balance‑sheet properties, with closing targeted in the third quarter of 2026. (investors.publicstorage.com) Rivr’s co‑founder and CEO Marko Bjelonic announced the corporate milestone on LinkedIn and the Zurich spin‑out — which ran pilots with partners including Veho, Just Eat Takeaway and Swiss Post — had previously raised a seed round led by investors that included Bezos Expeditions and Amazon’s Industrial Innovation Fund. (puertoricodigitalnews.com) The Rivian–Uber arrangement ties subsequent funding to autonomous performance milestones, commits an initial $300 million at signing subject to regulatory approval, designates Rivian’s R2 robotaxis for exclusive availability on Uber’s platform, and schedules first commercial deployments in San Francisco and Miami in 2028 with scaling to 25 cities through 2031. (investor.uber.com)
