Confluent Adds Partnerships to Facilitate Real-Time Data Streams for AI

Data streaming platform Confluent has announced its new initiative called Data Streaming for AI, aiming to simplify and accelerate organizations’ development of real-time AI applications.

Recognizing that real-time AI requires accurate and up-to-date data, Confluent is expanding partnerships with leading companies in the AI and vector database space, including MongoDB, Pinecone, Rockset, Weaviate and Zilliz, the company said in a Tuesday (Sept. 26) press release.

Jay Kreps, CEO and co-founder of Confluent, said in the release that data streaming is foundational technology for the future of AI.

“Continuously enriched, trustworthy data streams are key to building next-gen AI applications that are accurate and have the rich, real-time context modern use cases demand,” Kreps said. “We want to make it easier for every company to build powerful AI applications and are leveraging our expansive ecosystem of partners and data streaming expertise to help achieve that.”

AI has faced challenges due to a lack of access to relevant, real-time data, according to the release. Historical data integrated with slow, batch-based pipelines rendered the data stale and inconsistent by the time it arrived. Confluent said its Data Streaming for AI addresses these challenges by providing a real-time data foundation for modern AI.

Confluent’s extended partnerships in the AI space enable Confluent Cloud’s fully managed data streams to be accessed directly within these partners’ platforms, facilitating the use of real-time data for AI-powered applications, the release said. Additionally, Confluent is collaborating with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure to develop integrations and proof of concepts specifically around AI.

To further streamline the development of real-time applications, Confluent is introducing product innovations, per the release. The Confluent AI Assistant, which will be available to Confluent Cloud customers in 2024, turns natural language inputs into helpful suggestions and accurate code specific to the deployment. Another innovation is AI for Apache Flink SQL, which brings AI capabilities into Flink SQL, enabling various use cases such as sentiment analysis and summarizing item descriptions.

The launch of this initiative comes about two months after Confluent introduced a program to help its customers manage their data streams. The firm’s technology partner program lets Confluent’s partners “bring fully managed data streams directly to their customers through native integrations with Confluent Cloud,” the company said when announcing that initiative.

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