Google Said Set For Biggest Acquisition, Buying Israeli Firm For $23B

Google parent company Alphabet is reportedly on the cusp of its largest acquisition ever, with the purchase of Israeli cloud security startup Wiz for $23 billion. 

The deal would also be the largest in Israeli history, following the 2017 sale of autonomous vehicle firm Mobileye to Intel for $15 billion. It would also become Google’s second major acquisition of an Israeli tech company, having bought traffic navigation app Waze in 2013 for $1.1 billion.

Quoting people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal said if they reach fruition, the negotiations for the purchase should be finalized in the near future. 

Wiz analyzes infrastructure hosted in public cloud services for risk factors that could allow hackers to gain control of assets and obtain sensitive customer data.

Today headquartered in New York, the company was founded in 2020 in Tel Aviv by its CEO Assaf Rappaport, CTO Ami Luttwak, VP Product Yinon Costica and VP R&D Roy Reznik.   

Wiz said last year it had become the world’s largest cybersecurity unicorn, a company valued at $1 billion or more, and the fastest Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company to achieve a $10 billion valuation – making it a decacorn.

In May, it announced that it had closed a new funding round of $1 billion, based on a $12 billion valuation. The round brought Wiz’s overall funding to $1.9 billion.  

The WSJ said Google, which has a market value of over $2 trillion, was a “conservative acquirer” of new assets, comparig it to fellow US tech giant Microsoft, which last year bought gaming company ActivisionBlizzard, which makes the best-selling Call of Duty franchise, for a reported $75 billion.