Confluent, which provides an enterprise platform that collects and processes real-time data streams, raised $828 million by offering 23 million shares at $36, above the range of $29 to $33. Insiders Coatue Management and Altimeter Capital had indicated on buying 3.5 million shares in the offering.
Confluent states that it has pioneered a new category of data infrastructure designed to connect all the applications, systems, and data layers of a company around a real-time central nervous system. Using the open-source "data in motion" software Apache Kafka, Confluent's platform can be deployed either as a fully-managed, cloud-native SaaS offering, or an enterprise-ready, self-managed software offering. Fast-growing but unprofitable, the company had more than 2,500 customers as of March 2021, with a dollar-based net retention rate of 117%.
Confluent plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol CFLT. Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, BofA Securities, Citi, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, UBS Investment Bank, and Wells Fargo Securities acted as joint bookrunners on the deal.
