Google buys cybersecurity unicorn Wiz for $32 billion
It marks the largest deal of an Israeli-founded company after US giant Intel Corp bought Mobileye for $15.3 billion in 2017
TIMES OF ISRAEL – Google’s parent company, Alphabet, last week agreed to buy Israeli-founded cybersecurity unicorn Wiz in an all-cash deal for a staggering US $32 billion. The deal, the largest-ever purchase of an Israeli tech company, was hailed across Israel as a sign of the country’s technological prowess and resilience during the challenging war period.
It marks the largest deal of an Israeli-founded company after US giant Intel Corp bought Mobileye for $15.3 billion in 2017. For Google, it is the largest acquisition the search giant has ever made, more than double its record purchase of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in 2012.
“The deal is a significant milestone in the history of Israeli high-tech, especially in light of the renewed fighting this morning [and the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas collapsed],” said Yael Belgrai Cohen, head of the tech division at business analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet Israel. “It is an extraordinary vote of confidence that exemplifies that despite the war, the Israeli industry is still relevant.”
Over the past year, local startups and tech companies struggled to continue to run their businesses grappling with fundraising challenges as they sheltered from rockets, and many of their executives and employees were called up to reserve duty.
Pending regulatory approvals, Wiz will join Google’s Cloud business, but remain independent. The firm, which says that its cyber platform is tailored to secure any application developers build and run in the cloud, employs about 1800 workers. Wiz said it expects the deal to close in 2026.
“Wiz and Google Cloud are both fuelled by the belief that cloud security needs to be easier, more accessible, more intelligent, and democratised, so more organisations can adopt and use cloud and AI securely,” said Wiz co-founder Assaf Rappaport.
“Becoming part of Google Cloud is effectively strapping a rocket to our backs: it will accelerate our rate of innovation faster than what we could achieve as a standalone company.”
Ariel Peleg of the nonprofit Israeli Chamber of Information Technology described the Google-Wiz deal as “excellent news for Israeli high-tech in general and for the defence-tech sector in particular.”
News of the deal comes after the Israeli cyber unicorn made headlines last July for walking away from Alphabet’s then US $23 billion takeover offer. Talks for a deal were called off then partly due to concerns over the clearance of antitrust hurdles by regulatory bodies.
At the time, Rappaport said that Wiz sought to remain an independent cybersecurity unicorn rather than being absorbed by the tech giant. The company set out a growth path to double its annual recurring revenue (ARR) to $1 billion by 2025 and was eyeing plans for an initial public offering (IPO). After its latest private funding round announced in May, in which it raised $1 billion, the company was valued at $12 billion, only four years after its founding.
The cybersecurity unicorn was established in early 2020 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.
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