Google said nearing record-breaking $23 billion buy of Israeli-founded cyber startup
WSJ report says parent company Alphabet in ‘advanced talks’ with Wiz, in what would be its largest ever acquisition of another firm, and the biggest ever Israeli tech acquisition
Google is nearing a record-breaking deal to purchase Israeli-founded cybersecurity startup Wiz for $23 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The report said Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is in “advanced talks” to buy the New York-based Wiz, in a deal that would double its largest acquisition to date — the $12.5 billion purchase in 2012 of Motorola — and would mark the biggest acquisition of an Israeli tech firm.
The newspaper noted the potential deal comes as Google is seeking to improve its cloud computing business, which Wiz provides cybersecurity for, and would come as startups have been wary of mergers and acquisitions due to concerns of antitrust scrutiny.
Wiz was co-founded in early 2020 by Assaf Rappaport, Yinon Costica, Ami Luttwak and Roy Reznik, the same team that founded the firm Adallom, which was sold to Microsoft for $320 million in 2015. They also led Microsoft Azure’s Cloud Security Group. Its customers include 40 percent of the Fortune 100 companies, such as Slack, Mars, BMW, DocuSign, Plaid and Agoda.
After its latest private funding round announced in May, in which it raised $1 billion, the company was valued at $12 billion.
“2024 is the year of consolidation – for Wiz, and the industry at large,” Rappaport said at the time. “Our growth trajectory will continue to be aided by strategic acquisitions that propel us forward and enable us to cover more ground in less time.”
Earlier this year, Wiz snapped up Israeli cyber startup Gem Security for a reported $350 million and at the end of 2023, it bought Tel Aviv startup Rafft for an undisclosed sum.
Wiz, which says that its platform can secure everything developers build and run in the cloud, was established just as the COVID-19 pandemic started gaining pace around the world, sending entire enterprises and workers online and spurring a huge migration wave to cloud-based servers.
The company’s founders were added to Forbes’s list of the world’s richest people earlier this year, as the number of Israeli billionaires climbed from six to 36, and a deal with Google would further propel them up those ranks.
