Google is going to buy Wiz, the Israeli cybersecurity startup, for about $23 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. The largest purchase in Google's history, well above YouTube ($1.65 billion) and Motorola ($12.5 billion). It is also four times more than what it paid for Mandiant ($5.4 billion).

A meteoric rise in four years

Assaf Rappaport (CEO), Yinon Costica (VP Product), Roy Reznik (VP Engineering) and Ami Luttwak (CTO) founded Wiz just four years ago. In January 2020 they decided to set up this cybersecurity company, whose headquarters are in New York although the majority of the technical team is in Tel Aviv, Israel.

In this short period of time they have created a colossal company, whose last round of financing, in May 2024, already valued them at around $12 billion. They have currently obtained financing rounds worth about $1.9 billion and have about 950 employees.

They work with the main cloud infrastructures to add extra cybersecurity.

Wiz collaborates with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud. According to what Wiz boasts, they have 40% of the Fortune 100 among their clients. Which means that the majority of large companies trust their services for something as important as the cybersecurity of their cloud.

This has also translated into economic income. In an interview with Forbes, Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport explained that surpassing $100 million in annual recurring revenue in just 18 months. Never has a software company grown so much in such a short time. But nine months later they already exceeded 200 million dollars. According to their latest data from 2023, they have revenues of $350 million annually.

The idea of ​​its CEO was to reach 1,000 million sales and explore a possible IPO. However, it seems that Google has crossed its path.

A renowned team that was already signed by Microsoft a decade ago
Rappaport and the other three founders have been working together much longer than Wiz has. Although the startup was founded in 2020, they have been collaborating since 2012, when they decided to create Adallom, a cybersecurity company focused on Microsoft SharePoint.

It is no coincidence that Microsoft noticed them. In 2015, the Redmond company announced the purchase of Adallom for $320 million. The story will be familiar to us, as they had founded Adallom three years earlier.

Rappaport, Luttwak and Reznik met when they were young and doing Israel's mandatory military service. There they stood out for creating Unit 8200, specialized in elite intelligence. Israel is a country recognized for its cybersecurity experts. Not everything is NSO Group, we also have companies like QuaDream, CyberArk, Check Point, Aqua Security and a long list.

In the case of Wiz, its researchers have participated in the discovery of numerous important vulnerabilities, including OMIGOD, ExtraReplica, AttachMe, BigBang and ChaosDB from Microsoft Azure.