Confluent has unveiled major upgrades to its Confluent Cloud platform, introducing new capabilities for Apache Flink® that bring real-time and historical data together—delivering smarter analytics and agentic AI performance for enterprise users.
At the heart of the release is snapshot queries, now available in early access. These queries allow AI agents and analytics tools to process both real-time and batch data from a single interface, eliminating the need for multiple tools or complex workarounds. This unification enables AI to not only react to events as they happen but to understand them in the context of past patterns—critical for applications like fraud detection and healthcare diagnostics.
“Without high-quality, unified data, even the most advanced AI agents can’t deliver real value.”
— Shaun Clowes, Chief Product Officer, Confluent
“Agentic AI is moving from hype to enterprise adoption,” said Shaun Clowes, Chief Product Officer at Confluent. “The new Flink features ensure AI systems can access the complete picture, driving faster, more accurate decision-making.”
In addition to data unification, Confluent announced Confluent Cloud Network (CCN) Routing, which simplifies private networking for Flink by leveraging existing Kafka® infrastructure. This ensures secure data streaming for sensitive use cases, now generally available on AWS.
To bolster hybrid cloud security, IP Filtering is now also generally available, allowing enterprises to restrict Flink workload access by IP, improving visibility and preventing unauthorized access attempts.
Industry analysts agree that the rise of agentic AI requires platforms that can consolidate diverse data types into a single stream processing environment. With these new features, Confluent positions itself at the forefront of this shift, offering tools that make AI smarter and enterprise data more secure.
