Which event streaming platform startup was founded by Jay Kreps?

The event streaming platform startup founded by Jay Kreps is Confluent.

Kreps co-founded Confluent in 2014 with Jun Rao and Neha Narkhede. The company was created to commercialize Apache Kafka, an open-source event-streaming system the trio had helped develop while working at LinkedIn.

Kafka is the technology, while Confluent is the company built around hosting, managing, and extending it. That distinction causes a common mix-up: Apache Kafka is not a startup founded by Kreps, and Confluent is not simply another name for Kafka. Confluent offers products including Confluent Cloud and Confluent Platform.

The company became publicly traded in 2021. Kreps has continued as a central figure in the project and company, serving as Confluent’s chief executive. Its origins explain why the answer is tied to both startup history and modern data infrastructure.