# Jay Kreps

> Jay Kreps is the co-founder and CEO of Confluent, the data-streaming company built around Apache Kafka, the open-source platform he co-created at LinkedIn in 2010. In December 2025, IBM announced a deal to acquire Confluent for roughly $11 billion. He also serves on Anthropic's Board of Directors and wrote the book I Heart Logs.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Confluent
- **Organizations:** Confluent, Anthropic (Board of Directors), LinkedIn (former), NexTag (former)
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.S. in Computer Science, University of California, Santa Cruz, M.S. in Computer Science, University of California, Santa Cruz
- **Known for:** Co-created Apache Kafka, used by a majority of the Fortune 100, Co-author of Apache Samza and Project Voldemort, Led Confluent through its 2021 Nasdaq IPO

## Career timeline

- **2006** — Senior Software Engineer (Data Mining) at NexTag
- **2007** — Joins LinkedIn, becomes lead architect for data infrastructure
- **2010** — Co-creates Apache Kafka at LinkedIn with Neha Narkhede and Jun Rao
- **2013** — Publishes 'The Log: What every software engineer should know about real-time data's unifying abstraction'
- **2014** — Co-founds Confluent with Neha Narkhede and Jun Rao; publishes 'I Heart Logs' (O'Reilly)
- **2021** — Confluent goes public on Nasdaq (CFLT)
- **2024** — Appointed to Anthropic's Board of Directors
- **2025** — IBM announces $11B acquisition of Confluent

## Achievements

- Co-created Apache Kafka, used by a majority of the Fortune 100
- Co-author of Apache Samza and Project Voldemort
- Led Confluent through its 2021 Nasdaq IPO
- Brokered $11B Confluent-IBM acquisition (announced Dec 2025)
- Wrote 'I Heart Logs' (O'Reilly, 2014)
- Authored the seminal essay 'The Log' (2013)

## Latest updates

- **2025-12** — IBM announces $11 billion all-cash acquisition of Confluent at $31/share.
- **2024-05** — Appointed to Anthropic's Board of Directors by the Long-Term Benefit Trust.

## Links

- Website: https://confluent.io
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaykreps/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/jaykreps
- GitHub: https://github.com/jkreps

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/jay-kreps
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-30