by uncertainrhymes on 3/18/25, 12:18 PM with 845 comments
by czk on 3/18/25, 3:56 PM
> Wiz agreed to acquire Tel Aviv-based Raftt, a cloud-based developer collaboration platform, for $50 million in December 2023. In April 2024, the company acquired cloud detection and response startup, Gem Security, for around $350 million
> Wiz was founded in January 2020 by Assaf Rappaport, Yinon Costica, Roy Reznik, and Ami Luttwak, all of whom previously founded Adallom.
> Adallom was founded in 2012 by Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak and Roy Reznik, who are former members of the Israeli Intelligence Corps’ Unit 8200 and alumni of the Talpiot program.
> Adallom was reportedly acquired by Microsoft for $320 million in July 2015
> On March 18, 2025, Google announced an all-cash acquisition of Wiz for $32 billion
Had never heard of Wiz until they posted the blog post about the DeepSeek database being public earlier this year.
https://www.wiz.io/blog/wiz-research-uncovers-exposed-deepse...
by eitally on 3/18/25, 1:02 PM
It shouldn't be overlooked that acquiring Wiz is also a way for Google to secure a beachhead in half the Fortune 100, many of which are "enemy" territory.
The price is high, but there aren't many options available and Wiz has the advantage of being built on Google Cloud natively, and already have Marketplace integrations completed.
by dinobones on 3/18/25, 6:01 PM
Assume 1,000 customers each generating $2m in ARR with contracts. That’s $2 billion. Assume generous 6x ARR valuation, that’s $12 billion.
Where is this $20 billion premium coming from? How could the board approve this? How is this fair to shareholders?
Heck, as a minor shareholder in GOOG, I don’t find this financially responsible at all.
I can’t help but think sometimes these tech acquisitions have some hint of nepotism/deeper underlying motivations behind them than meets the eye.
by film42 on 3/18/25, 2:28 PM
But also, and may more important, you get to see everyones cloud usage, across all providers, with a high level of permissions. Said differently, Google can now target customers with massive spend across other cloud providers and work to migrate them to GCP, at a price that's just cheap enough to over come the switching cost.
by majestik on 3/18/25, 4:39 PM
Google already have one of the best security teams in the industry - Project Zero [0]. They don't need Wiz's "enterprise" expertise for security.
This deal is about DATA. Wiz, as a cybersecurity vendor, have full remote access to their customers cloud compute storage (EC2 EBS volumes, etc) in the name of "security scanning" - this is actually part of their unique selling point - "agent-less scanning" which is unlike traditional security tools that require an agent installed in the OS. Instead, Wiz is able to just clone your full data volume and scan it locally in their cloud accounts/VPC.
With this deal Google has bought a ton of confidential data from Wiz's customers without their explicit knowledge or approval, and they will use it to improve Google's AI models like Gemini and probably several other products.
A year ago Google struck a $60M/yr deal with Reddit to exclusively license their content [1] for the same reason, and that data is probably much smaller and less valuable than the data Wiz has access to from their customers, which include companies like Morgan Stanley, DocuSign, Slack, Plaid, and others. [2]
Sources:
0: https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com
1: https://www.reuters.com/technology/reddit-ai-content-licensi...
by kmfrk on 3/18/25, 1:21 PM
https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/23/24204198/google-wiz-acqui...
by walterbell on 3/18/25, 2:45 PM
> Wiz combines a graph search for asset management with agentless vuln and malware scanning that clones EBS volumes and scans them on their infrastructure. That's a great combo for vuln management, but has some downsides like delays between scans and cloud costs. They have a sensor with solid detection rules, and are okay at a bunch of other stuff like cloud log threat detection and sensitive data detection. They've basically pushed what you can do without an agent to the limit.
VC approach to enterprise sales, https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/b1a1jn00hc & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41042462
> [Cyberstarts] shows an internal rate of return of more than 100%, an unusual figure even for the best funds in the world.. The first sales come from the loyal CISOs who work with the fund.. Ra'anan offers [CISOs] the big dream of the world of employees - shares in a venture capital fund.. all funds that specialize in cyber go after CISOs and entice them with dinners, conferences, and some also offer them holdings in the fund. However.. he perfected it to a completely different level.. No CISO has ever received compensation for purchasing products.. They receive 4% of the success fees of the general partner (GP) in the fund.
by ChicagoBoy11 on 3/18/25, 2:17 PM
I'm just trying to make sense of the numbers.
by smlacy on 3/18/25, 6:37 PM
by amazingamazing on 3/18/25, 1:15 PM
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41042034
That being said, Instagram and WhatsApp were expensive for Facebook and those ended up being a steal. Time will tell, as usual.
by atonse on 3/18/25, 2:07 PM
What usually happens otherwise? Would they do partly google stock, etc? And each shareholder gets some kind of multiple? (you get your N amount of Wiz shares X .72 = your number of google shares), or something of that sort?
by kamranjon on 3/18/25, 2:30 PM
by _countzero_ on 3/18/25, 2:24 PM
For Instagram and WhatsApp it was the user base and growth that was being bought, which is much harder to acquire than some random B2B saas security software.
by yakkomajuri on 3/19/25, 2:50 PM
They announced in a blog post that they went from $1m ARR to $100m ARR in 18 months (Feb 2021 -> July 2022). [1]
Reuters in the article posted here reports they were at $500m ARR when they last raised in mid-2024, meaning they went from $100m to $500m in around 2 years.
One would thus speculate they are likely a few hundred million above the half-a-billion figure today.
The multiple still appears a little high to me (particularly given it's all-cash, which Google doesn't even have) but what do I know.
[1] https://www.wiz.io/blog/100m-arr-in-18-months-wiz-becomes-th...
by whitepoplar on 3/18/25, 1:06 PM
by 1970-01-01 on 3/18/25, 12:57 PM
by epolanski on 3/18/25, 2:11 PM
Like 32B is no small sum, and I don't really understand Wiz business (product yes, business and numbers much less).
by upcoming-sesame on 3/18/25, 12:37 PM
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiz_(company)#/media/File%3A...
by aswerty on 3/18/25, 1:07 PM
by elAhmo on 3/19/25, 3:46 PM
It makes no sense for a company to have two mapping applications, yet 15 years later, more than a billion paid, one of the most valuable companies in the world failed to integrate another app.
Most people using Waze have no idea that it is owned by Google.
by dtquad on 3/18/25, 8:04 PM
Absurd take. Google is the one AI company that is not completely dependent on Nvidia because they now use their own TPU chips for both inference and training.
by yujzgzc on 3/18/25, 2:10 PM
by bookofjoe on 3/18/25, 5:04 PM
by Keyframe on 3/18/25, 5:11 PM
by siva7 on 3/18/25, 2:41 PM
by magicfractal on 3/19/25, 4:01 AM
by thiago_fm on 3/18/25, 2:35 PM
Currently, Crowdstrike, Zscaler and other solutions compete in a similar space than Wiz.
Google likely believes if can offer Wiz sec products bundled with Google Cloud. It isn't a terrible idea.
But Wiz itself works on multiple clouds, so it seems that Google can also grow it on their own.
Cloud security companies are growing a lot, and might be a growth lever for Alphabet, as its other businesses' revenue growth are slowing down.
My assumption is that this will actually make it easier for Crowdstrike and Zscaler to keep their market share, as they are pure-play companies on Cloud security and Alphabet has too many businesses to manage.
For me, it looks overpriced. Wiz has been growing a lot, but under Alphabet it might not perform as well as it did.
The big winners are the founders and whoever owned Wiz options.
by Zaheer on 3/18/25, 6:17 PM
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2024/10/28/this-vc-b...
https://web.archive.org/web/20250312193110/https://www.forbe...
by sidcool on 3/18/25, 12:57 PM
by bitlad on 3/18/25, 6:09 PM
[1] https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/blogs/cyberstarts- program-sparks-debate-over-ethical-boundaries-p-3763
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2024/10/28/this-vc-b...
by leftcenterright on 3/18/25, 3:43 PM
- Businesses pay the cloud providers to allow them to use compute/disk/network
- Businesses pay to hire the engineers who can work on cloud
- Businesses pay to hire security engineers who can secure the applications in cloud
- Businesses pay to hire FinOps to optimize their cloud usage
- Businesses hire security companies to secure their cloud usage (e.g. Wiz was one such company)
- Now cloud provider has to acquire the security company to secure their own cloud?
Either I am too old, or there is something wrong here. Let's not forget that at the same time many big businesses do just fine by not using AWS/GCP/Azure.
by yalogin on 3/19/25, 12:08 AM
Among the wiz customers if they use GCP already then surely they will be willing to try the functionality of google builds it.
If the customer doesn’t use GCP, chances are they wont move to GCP and probably move away from wiz too after the acquisition.
I don’t get why they bought them instead of copying them
by ChrisArchitect on 3/18/25, 2:10 PM
by dboreham on 3/18/25, 3:21 PM
by mmaunder on 3/18/25, 12:57 PM
by Klaster_1 on 3/18/25, 1:16 PM
by antirez on 3/18/25, 9:52 PM
by Animats on 3/18/25, 11:38 PM
by archsyscall on 3/18/25, 2:29 PM
by tzury on 3/18/25, 5:14 PM
It helped them “get to the point” quicker and “cleaner”.
by tinyhouse on 3/18/25, 6:24 PM
The most amazing thing is that Wiz is a fairly young company. Founded in early 2000.
One thing for sure. If this guy ever starts another company, I'm sending my resume :)
by nujabe on 3/19/25, 12:14 AM
by nujabe on 3/19/25, 12:02 AM
There has been a full and total coup of Zionist influence peddles over over the United States government. This is the lens in which you should look at this deal.
The Department of Education is on the verge of being abolished, and the remaining skeleton staff have been redirected to investigate cases of "antisemitism". [2]
The administration is weaponizing 'antisemitism' to unleash once unthinkable retributions against opponents of the State of Israel. The Zionist lobby is using the full levers of the US government to direct their wrath against opponents, and no one is being spared, not universities, students and even entire nations.
It would be naive to think the leadership at Alphabet are unaware of that good things happen when you be good to Zionists.
It's really a shame really, from 'Don't be Evil' to funding decades more years of 'Israeli Americans' using this wealth to funnel to AIPAC and other nefarious political causes. [3]
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-israel-literally-owned-c...
[2] https://time.com/7268749/education-department-staff-cuts-imp...
[3] https://www.timesofisrael.com/whatsapp-founder-jan-koum-dona...
by spaintech on 3/18/25, 3:24 PM
by securingsincity on 3/18/25, 2:24 PM
by OccamsMirror on 3/18/25, 1:50 PM
Wow. I wonder how Google justified this acquisition. I fear they will eventually shutter this service, and likely without even pulling anything good into their own cloud offerings.
by colesantiago on 3/18/25, 1:25 PM
by xyst on 3/18/25, 2:47 PM
G might be the modern day IBM.
You would think G would have the brain power to compete and provide out of the box security for their own platform. I guess the MBA losers at the top have been shaving too much from engineering to do this properly.
The acquisition hiring in big tech is wild to me. And the consolidation of power into a few companies continues.
by CannoloBlahnik on 3/18/25, 1:05 PM
by kats on 3/18/25, 5:53 PM
There is no pressure or need to buy Wiz.
by pbiggar on 3/19/25, 11:31 AM
by dingody on 3/19/25, 3:20 AM
by purple_ferret on 3/18/25, 3:36 PM
by Wheaties466 on 3/18/25, 6:24 PM
While it seems like we aren't getting a ton of people who have used the product in the comments. I can tell you it checks a lot of boxes to make people sleep better at night with customer data in the cloud.
by 1024core on 3/18/25, 3:37 PM
by nikhizzle on 3/18/25, 2:11 PM
by ChrisArchitect on 3/18/25, 2:11 PM
Google + Wiz: Strengthening Multicloud Security
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/goo...
by EternalFury on 3/19/25, 1:46 PM
by jonjojojon on 3/18/25, 6:38 PM
by cft on 3/18/25, 6:04 PM
by hard_times on 3/18/25, 6:06 PM
by shprd on 3/18/25, 1:22 PM
The article says:
> The price tag is much higher than the roughly $23 billion Google had offered for Wiz last year before antitrust worries forced the startup to shelve the deal.
> Wall Street is optimistic that the Trump administration would drop some antitrust policies
Is that it? It's crazy to announce the deal before there's any actual policy changes. Why the rush? It's not like someone is outbidding them here.
by tnolet on 3/18/25, 1:39 PM
by Aeolun on 3/19/25, 5:58 PM
by orliesaurus on 3/18/25, 2:05 PM
by TriangleEdge on 3/19/25, 4:44 AM
by odysseus on 3/18/25, 6:45 PM
by jimnotgym on 3/18/25, 6:59 PM
by kome on 3/19/25, 5:22 AM
by airstrike on 3/18/25, 1:22 PM
by xnx on 3/18/25, 2:07 PM
by aussieguy1234 on 3/18/25, 10:08 PM
by sidcool on 3/18/25, 4:10 PM
by jb1991 on 3/18/25, 3:34 PM
by kats on 3/18/25, 2:16 PM
by mattlutze on 3/18/25, 2:33 PM
by gnuser on 3/18/25, 4:36 PM
by Fokamul on 3/18/25, 3:30 PM
by drcongo on 3/18/25, 1:13 PM
by Ancalagon on 3/18/25, 6:03 PM
by 999900000999 on 3/18/25, 3:56 PM
Wiz will do it.
Always happy to see a good exit, good show.
I've worked with cloud for a long time. I sorta blame myself for not seeing the market for this and not starting up my own company. I was too busy messing with machine learning, but never going much beyond sentiment analysis. Had I also stayed on that path, and maybe had a few million dollars in startup Capital laying around I'd be a billionaire by now ( yes this is hyperbole).
Oh well, time to cry myself asleep as a forever middle class software engineer...
by subarctic on 3/18/25, 8:01 PM
by drukenemo on 3/18/25, 7:34 PM
by bloodyplonker22 on 3/18/25, 11:29 PM
by sudo-i on 3/18/25, 2:31 PM
by bitsandboots on 3/18/25, 4:30 PM
And best of luck to the Wiz folks! Whenever I see Google acquisitions I just wonder how long until they end up in the graveyard listing.
by DSingularity on 3/19/25, 12:04 PM
by twinofpoolg on 3/19/25, 12:17 AM
Google could have built this in-house.
While millions and billions struggle this is how you do it at high level.
SoonDar goes brrrrrrr.
by topherPedersen on 3/18/25, 9:18 PM
by mocules on 3/22/25, 3:31 AM
by DidYaWipe on 3/19/25, 4:50 AM
by siliconc0w on 3/18/25, 2:33 PM
by lynn_xx on 3/19/25, 3:23 AM
by lawrenceyan on 3/18/25, 11:05 PM
by darylteo on 3/18/25, 8:52 PM
by gatkinso on 3/18/25, 11:51 PM
by asdf6969 on 3/19/25, 4:50 AM
by maxlin on 3/19/25, 6:22 AM
People who haven't forgotten what happened with Revolv remember.
by yathaid on 3/18/25, 1:19 PM
by siliconc0w on 3/18/25, 6:24 PM
by seydor on 3/18/25, 4:49 PM
by ceva on 3/18/25, 1:16 PM
by tlogan on 3/19/25, 5:39 AM
by 9cb14c1ec0 on 3/18/25, 7:03 PM
by m00dy on 3/19/25, 5:51 AM
by jckrichabdkejdb on 3/18/25, 2:24 PM
by dmchk on 3/18/25, 2:12 PM
by mjlee on 3/18/25, 2:02 PM
by codingmoney on 3/18/25, 4:24 PM