On March 18, 2025, Google announced it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Wiz, a leading cloud security platform headquartered in New York, for $32 billion in an all-cash transaction. The deal shattered Google’s previous acquisition record and became the largest cybersecurity purchase in history. More importantly, it signals a fundamental shift in how tech giants approach cloud security in the age of artificial intelligence.
This wasn’t Google’s first attempt to buy Wiz. In July 2024, Wiz walked away from a potential $23 billion acquisition by Google and announced to employees that it would pursue an IPO instead. CEO Assaf Rappaport called rejecting that offer “the toughest decision ever.” Nine months later, with the IPO market still frozen and regulatory winds shifting under a new administration, both companies returned to the negotiating table. The result: a deal worth $9 billion more than the original offer.
Why Google Paid Premium Prices for Wiz
Google didn’t just buy a cybersecurity company—it acquired the fastest-growing security platform in tech history. Wiz claimed to be the fastest startup ever to scale from $1 million to $100 million in annual recurring revenue, achieving this milestone between February 2021 and approximately July 2022. By 2024, the company served 45% of Fortune 100 companies. That kind of explosive growth doesn’t happen by accident.
Wiz delivers a seamless cloud security platform that connects to all major clouds and code environments to help prevent incidents from happening in the first place. Unlike traditional security tools that work within single cloud environments, Wiz scans across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle simultaneously. It constructs comprehensive graphs showing how code, cloud resources, services, and applications interconnect—revealing security risks that other tools miss entirely.
For Google Cloud, this capability solves a critical strategic problem. The deal was reached amid a rapid acceleration of AI adoption, the need to strengthen cloud security in the enterprise and the desire of major organizations to operate in a multicloud environment. Most large enterprises don’t use just one cloud provider anymore. They spread workloads across multiple platforms for redundancy, cost optimization, and vendor diversification. Google needs security solutions that work everywhere, not just within its own ecosystem.
The Founders Who Built a Unicorn in Record Time
Wiz was founded in January 2020 by Assaf Rappaport, Yinon Costica, Roy Reznik, and Ami Luttwak, all of whom previously founded Adallom. These four entrepreneurs met as teenagers in Unit 8200, Israel’s elite cyber intelligence division often compared to the NSA. Their military experience gave them deep technical expertise in identifying and preventing sophisticated cyber threats.
Their first venture together, Adallom, caught Microsoft’s attention quickly. Microsoft acquired Adallom in July 2015 for approximately $320 million. The founders then spent nearly five years at Microsoft, where Rappaport led the company’s Cloud Security Group and headed Microsoft’s Israel R&D Center with 1,500 employees. During this time, they built Azure’s security stack and witnessed firsthand how Fortune 500 companies struggled with multicloud security.
That experience shaped their vision for Wiz. Rather than building another point solution, they wanted to create a “single pane of glass” that security teams could use to monitor all their cloud infrastructure simultaneously. While at Microsoft, they had identified a hole in the cloud security market: Unlike with on-premise cybersecurity, there wasn’t a way for security teams to view all their cloud servers in a “single pane of glass”.
How Wiz Won Over Enterprise Customers
Wiz’s customer list reads like a who’s who of global business. Customers include Agoda, Avery Dennison, BMW, Cushman & Wakefield, DocuSign, Mars, Plaid, Priceline, Salesforce, and Slack, among others. Landing these accounts required more than just good technology—it demanded relentless focus on customer needs and extraordinary sales execution.
The founders’ strategy centered on proving value quickly. Early customers received white-glove treatment, with the founding team personally ensuring successful implementations. This approach built credibility through reference customers who could vouch for Wiz’s effectiveness. Once Home Depot, Morgan Stanley, and BMW signed on, other Fortune 500 companies followed rapidly.
Wiz also demonstrated technical excellence by discovering major vulnerabilities in cloud platforms. The company’s researchers found critical flaws in Microsoft Azure, including bugs they named ChaosDB, OMIGOD, and ExtraReplica. These discoveries generated significant media coverage while proving Wiz understood cloud security at the deepest technical levels.
The Deal That Almost Didn’t Happen
Last year, a source familiar with the matter said Wiz walked away from the deal in July in part due to antitrust and investor concerns. At the time, Google faced intense regulatory scrutiny. A federal judge had just ruled that Google holds a monopoly in the search market, making another massive acquisition seem risky. Wiz’s investors also worried about losing independence and limiting the company’s eventual upside.
But circumstances changed dramatically heading into 2025. The IPO market remained effectively closed for tech companies, making the path to public markets uncertain. More significantly, the regulatory environment shifted with a new presidential administration. The revived talks and sale agreement come following the departure of Biden antitrust regulators who took a very tough approach to mega mergers.
Google announced its intent to acquire cloud security company Wiz in March and the deal is now on track to close in early 2026. After receiving DOJ clearance in November 2025, only European and international regulatory approvals remain. Google structured the deal to maintain Wiz’s independence and multicloud approach, addressing earlier concerns about vendor lock-in.
What This Means for Cloud Security’s Future
The Wiz acquisition fundamentally changes competitive dynamics in cloud security. Google now controls the industry’s fastest-growing platform, one that already protects half the Fortune 100. This gives Google Cloud a powerful weapon in its battle against AWS and Microsoft Azure for enterprise customers.
Wiz’s products will continue to work and be available across all major clouds, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud platforms. This commitment to remaining cloud-agnostic helps Google position itself as the neutral security provider that protects customers regardless of their infrastructure choices. It’s a smart strategic move that could accelerate enterprise adoption of Google Cloud services.
For competitors, the deal raises the stakes considerably. Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, and other security vendors now face a well-funded rival backed by Google’s vast resources. Wiz can invest more heavily in product development, make strategic acquisitions of its own, and offer more competitive pricing. The pressure on competitors to consolidate or find differentiation just intensified significantly.
The Broader Implications for Tech M&A
At $32 billion, the Wiz acquisition ranks as the seventh-biggest takeover of a private US firm on record. More importantly, it demonstrates that mega-deals can still get done in 2025-2026. After years of regulatory uncertainty that chilled M&A activity, this approval sends a clear signal: strategic acquisitions in technology sectors critical to national security will receive favorable treatment.
The deal’s structure also provides a template for future large tech acquisitions. By maintaining Wiz as an independent platform that works across all clouds, Google addressed potential antitrust concerns about leveraging the acquisition to lock customers into Google Cloud. This approach may become standard for platform acquisitions going forward.
For Israeli tech companies, the Wiz deal represents a watershed moment. If finalized, the deal would be the largest in Google’s history, as well as the largest acquisition of an Israeli technology company. This validates Israel’s cybersecurity ecosystem and will likely drive increased venture capital investment into Israeli startups. Founders across Tel Aviv are now aiming to build “the next Wiz.”
What Happens Next
Google is in advanced negotiations to lease an additional 25,000 square meters in the ToHa 2 tower, currently under construction in Tel Aviv. This expansion will house Wiz employees joining Google toward the end of 2026. Google currently employs about 2,000 people in Israel; adding Wiz’s roughly 900 Israeli employees nearly doubles that footprint.
The integration promises to accelerate both companies’ AI security initiatives. Wiz gains access to Google’s deep AI expertise and computing resources. Google gains Wiz’s proven ability to secure complex, multicloud environments where AI workloads increasingly run. Together, they’re positioning to define what AI security looks like for the next decade.
For Rappaport and his co-founders, the outcome represents an extraordinary financial success. With an estimated 10% stake, Rappaport stands to make over $3 billion before taxes. But more than the money, the founders achieved something rare in tech: they built a company so valuable that a tech giant paid top dollar on the second attempt.
The Google-Wiz deal proves that in cybersecurity, technical excellence combined with relentless customer focus can create unprecedented value. As cloud infrastructure becomes more complex and AI expands attack surfaces, the companies that can simplify security while actually preventing breaches will command premium valuations. Wiz demonstrated this thesis conclusively. Now, under Google’s ownership, they’ll try to prove they can maintain that momentum at scale.
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