Google in negotiations to acquire Wiz in $23 billion deal
Google in negotiations to acquire Wiz in $23 billion deal
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google parent Alphabet is looking to purchase the Israeli cybersecurity company in what would be its largest acquisition ever. Wiz raised $1 billion at a $12 billion valuation earlier this year.
Google parent Alphabet is in advanced negotiations to acquire Israeli cybersecurity startup Wiz for around $23 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. Should the deal be completed, it would be both Google’s largest acquisition ever and the largest ever exit in Israeli tech history.
Cloud security decacorn Wiz announced two months ago that it had raised $1 billion at a $12 billion valuation, bringing the company’s total funding to $1.9 billion. The latest round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Thrive Capital, with participation from Greylock, Wellington Management, and existing investors Cyberstarts, Greenoaks, Howard Schultz, Index Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Sequoia Capital. The round also included a relatively small secondary component estimated at tens of millions of dollars.
The biggest funding round in Israeli tech history came on the heels of Wiz’s acquisition of Israeli startup Gem Security, a Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) provider. It was Wiz's second acquisition since its inception in 2020, after the company acquired Israeli startup Raftt, a cloud-based developer collaboration platform, last December.
Wiz announced earlier this year that it had reached $350 million in ARR, with over 40% of the Fortune 100 as customers. The company previously expressed interest in pursuing M&A opportunities as part of its mission to build a holistic cloud security platform catering to a wide array of industry needs.
Wiz was founded by CEO Assaf Rappaport, CTO Ami Luttwak, VP Product Yinon Costica, and VP R&D Roy Reznik, who according to Forbes now all have a personal fortune of around $1 billion.
Rappaport was previously General Manager of R&D at Microsoft Israel after having sold his previous company Adallom to the tech giant for $320 million in 2015. Wiz’s other co-founders have been with Rappaport since his days in the military and filled various roles at Adallom, too.
