IBM to acquire Confluent

This is so fascinating to me. I mean how IBM keeps taking over other companies, but they consistently deliver low quality/bottom-tier services and products. Why do they keep doing the same thing again and again? How are they generating actual revenue this way?

Ok, so does anyone remember 'Watson'? It was the chatgpt before chatgpt. they built it in house. Why didn't they compete with OpenAI like Google and Anthropic are doing, with in-house tools? They have a mature PowerPC (Power9+? now?)setup, lots of talent to make ML/LLMs work and lots of existing investment in datacenters and getting GPU-intense workloads going.

I don't disagree that this acquisition is good strategy, I'm just fascinated (Schadenfreude?) to witness the demise of confluent now. I think economists should study this, it might help avert larger problems.

Your fascination seems hinged on the fact that IBM has "lots of talent to make ML/LLMs work" which judging by what they've put out so far and talk publicly about, is very far from the truth. Anyone who has a clue seems to (rightly) have left IBM decades ago, and left are business people who think "Managed to increase margin by 0.1%" is something to celebrate.