Google completes $32 billion Wiz deal

The largest-ever purchase of an Israeli-founded tech company was completed last Wednesday after multiple anti-trust regulators cleared the acquisition of cybersecurity unicorn Wiz by Alphabet’s Google for a staggering $US32 billion ($45.3 billion).

The completion of the transaction is expected to funnel an estimated NIS 10 billion ($4.5 billion) into Israel’s state coffers in tax proceeds, as the four founders of Wiz and many of its employees are Israeli residents and some of its investors are based in Israel.

The deal, first announced in March last year, marks the largest purchase of an Israeli-founded company after US giant Intel Corp bought Mobileye, a Jerusalem-based developer of advanced vision and driver assistance systems, for $US15.3 billion in 2017. For Google, it represents the largest acquisition the search giant has ever made. “The finalisation of Google’s acquisition of Wiz, roughly a year after it was first announced, sends a powerful signal about the strength and credibility of Israel’s technology ecosystem,” said Israel Innovation Authority CEO Dror Bin.

“In a period when Israel has been facing complex security challenges, the completion of a deal of this scale reflects deep global confidence in the talent, resilience and innovation that define Israeli tech.”

As part of the deal, 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, a workforce that will remain in place.

“By bringing Wiz and Google Cloud together, we’re making it easier for organisations to innovate with confidence,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

The deal is expected to boost Google’s cloud security offerings to help it compete with rival tech giants Amazon and Microsoft, and other big cyber firms such as Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike.

With the acquisition, Google seeks to build an AI-powered cybersecurity platform that combines its threat intelligence and security operations with Wiz’s cloud and AI security platform.

“Our mission remains bold and unwavering: to help every organisation protect everything they build and run,” said Wiz co-founder Assaf Rappaport. “What has changed is the world around us. Now, we must do this at the speed of AI.”

Wiz was founded 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, which in turn exposed businesses and organisations to heightened network security risks.

Wiz’s four founders – Rappaport, 40, Yinon Costica, 41, Ami Luttwak, 40, and Roy Reznik, 35 – met in the IDF and served together for almost a decade. They were graduates of the famed elite Israeli military intelligence unit 8200, which has built a track record of churning out serial tech entrepreneurs and founders of startups, including Nice, Palo Alto Networks, CyberArk and Waze.

TIMES OF ISRAEL