Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Breakfast, where we cover the top news for investors every morning.

Good morning. Today is Monday, December 8th, and I'm your host, Kim Khan, filling in for Julie Morgan.

IBM is in advanced negotiations to acquire Confluent, a real-time data infrastructure company in a deal valued

at around $11 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. The move would support IBM's push

into hybrid cloud and AI by integrating Confluence real-time data streaming technology into its

analytics and enterprise cloud services, giving IBM a stronger position against AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

Confluent was founded by the creators of Apache Kafka, the widely used open source platform

for managing streams of real-time data, which are increasingly critical to AI models and

enterprise automation. The company has a market cap of around $8 billion, with customers across

finance, retail, and other

data-heavy sectors. The potential deal follows IBM's recent acquisition of HashiCorp,

signaling a continued consolidation push around AI-driven enterprise software and cloud infrastructure.

Eli Lilly, Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson have secured spots on China's first innovative

drug catalog for

private insurance, a program designed to expand access to high-cost therapies.

Bloomberg reports that the catalog includes 19 medicines for conditions such as cancer,

Alzheimer's, and rare genetic disorders.

Eli Lilly's diabetes drug, Manjaro, will be added to China's state-run health insurance

schemes starting January 1st for type 2 diabetes.

Manjaro, a once-weekly injectable launched in China earlier this year, is also approved for

obesity and obstructive sleep apnea.

Novo-Noridisks of Zempec, a similar therapy, was added to China's reimbursement list

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