The company that commercialized the plumbing underneath every real-time application on the internet. Apache Kafka — which they invented at LinkedIn — processes trillions of events daily at companies like Netflix, Uber, and Goldman Sachs. Confluent makes Kafka usable for mere mortals. Revenue approaching $1 billion. The challenge: Kafka is open-source and free. AWS, Azure, and GCP all offer managed Kafka services. Confluent has to keep being better than free, which is a tough position but they've managed it for a decade.
Founded
2014
HQ
Mountain View, CA
Total Raised
$456 million
Founder
Jay Kreps, Neha Narkhede & Jun Rao
Status
Public (NASDAQ: CFLT) — market cap ~$9 billion
Website
www.confluent.ioTHE ORIGIN STORY
Jay Kreps, Neha Narkhede, and Jun Rao built Apache Kafka at LinkedIn to solve a massive data problem: how do you process billions of events per day in real-time? Kafka became the most popular real-time data streaming platform in the world.
They left LinkedIn to start Confluent — the commercial company behind Kafka — to make it easier for every company to use real-time data streaming.
WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DO
Open-core SaaS. Confluent Cloud (fully managed service) charges based on data throughput.
Confluent Platform (self-managed) via enterprise licensing. Revenue exceeded $900 million in fiscal 2024.
Cloud revenue growing 40%+ year-over-year.
THE PRODUCTS
Confluent Cloud (managed Kafka), Confluent Platform (self-managed Kafka), ksqlDB (stream processing), Connect (data connectors), Stream Governance, Flink on Confluent (stream processing).
HOW THEY GREW
Cloud-first growth. Confluent Cloud (the managed service) is growing faster than the self-managed platform.
Making Kafka easy to use — not just powerful — is the key. Also building features on top of streaming: Flink-based stream processing, connectors to every data system, and governance tools.
THE HARD PART
Convincing enterprises that real-time data streaming is essential, not optional. Most companies still process data in batches (daily, hourly) rather than real-time streams.
Confluent has to educate the market while competing with open-source Kafka (which is free) and cloud providers building their own streaming services.
WHO BACKED THEM
Benchmark, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Coatue Management, Altimeter Capital
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