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Confluent Joins Revenue Unicorn Club

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Congratulations to Confluent as it crosses $1 Billion in annual revenue and joins the software Revenue Unicorns!

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Let's see what we can learn from Confluent's journey...

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Revenue Growth

Confluent demonstrated consistent and durable revenue growth across all stages on its path to $1 Billion in revenue. Notably, Confluent’s revenue growth was greater than the Revenue Unicorn median between $250 Million and $500 Million in revenue.

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Gross Margin

Confluent’s gross margin structure has improved overtime, matching the Revenue Unicorn median since achieving $750 Million in revenue. Elastic and Palo Alto Networks displayed similar gross margin progression across revenue ranges.

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Sales & Marketing

Confluent invested more than the Revenue Unicorn median in sales and marketing during its path to $1 Billion in annual revenue. Okta and Procore also invested more than the Revicorn median for sales and marketing expense as a percentage of revenue across all revenue ranges.

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Research & Development

Confluent invested heavily in research and development throughout their lifecycle. Confluent’s spend on research and development trended in a similar fashion to MongoDB on the path to $1 Billion in annual revenue.

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General & Administrative

Confluent’s general and administrative expense was above the median Revenue Unicorn as they scaled from $250 Million to $750 Million in annual revenue, before becoming roughly equal to the median through the remainder of their journey to $1 Billion in revenue.

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Stock Based Compensation

Confluent had a higher SBC expense as a percentage of revenue compared to the Revenue Unicorn median on their journey to $1 Billion in revenue. When viewing SBC expense as a percentage of enterprise value, Confluent is at 5.0%,which is higher than the Revenue Unicorn median of 1.8% in the $1 Billion+ revenue range.

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Free Cash Flow

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Confluent’s free cash flow margin improved with scale. Cloudflare delivered a similar trend of improving free cash flow margin with business growth.

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Time to Reach $1 Billion in Revenue

Confluent reached $1 Billion in revenue after 10.25 years. This is faster than the median time of 13.50 years it took other Revenue Unicorns to reach the $1 Billion mark. Other Revenue Unicorns that took a similar amount of time to achieve the $1 Billion revenue threshold include Datadog (11.00 years) and Twilio (10.75 years).

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Other Revenue Unicorns founded around the same time as Confluent (2014 founding) include Samsara (2015), Snowflake (2012), and Elastic (2012). This set of companies took a median of 8.75 years to achieve $1 Billion in revenue (Samsara at 8.25 years, Snowflake at 8.75 years, and Elastic at 10.00 years).

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The Journey to $1 Billion in Revenue

For those of you that love data as much as we do, below is the full data set used for this analysis.

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Again, congratulations to the Confluent team! Stay tuned for the next Revenue Unicorn update.

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Note: The complete list of Revenue Unicorns used in the comparison can be found in the presentation here.

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About Confluent

Confluent was founded in 2014 by Jay Kreps, Jun Rao, and Neha Narkhede. As per the Company’s materials, Confluent is a global real-time operations and analytics provider that enables organizations to stream, connect, process, and govern data in motion across the entire enterprise. Confluent’s Data Streaming Platform is designed to serve as the intelligent connective tissue linking all the applications, systems, and data layers within a company into a single central nervous system of real-time streams of data. Confluent’s Data Streaming Platform delivers four key capabilities, Stream, Connect, Process, and Govern, that reinforce each other to create a comprehensive platform for data in motion. Streaming is the foundation, enabling data to continuously move in real-time to power modern business operations and applications. As companies implement more and more data streams, they must connect a growing number of systems, applications, and data sources with the ultimate goal of building a complete network that spans the entire technology stack. Confluent’s Data Streaming Platform is designed to fulfill all these customer needs in a comprehensive and integrated way.

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The Company reported $271 Million in first quarter revenue for the period ended March 31, 2025. Combined with results from the preceding quarters, this recent performance boosts Confluent across the $1 Billion in annual revenue threshold as measured on a last twelve month basis to become the latest software Revenue Unicorn.

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About The Revenue Unicorn Playbook

The Revenue Unicorn Playbook is an analytical guide that explores the growth of public software companies from $100 Million to $1 Billion in revenue. The goal of the Playbook is to offer founders and company leaders a framework to examine their growth and investments as they scale. You can find the original Revenue Unicorn article here and presentation here.