Wiz Reportedly Rejects $23 Bln Offer From Google, To Pursue IPO

(RTTNews) - Cybersecurity firm Wiz, which had been in advanced talks to be acquired by tech major Google's parent Alphabet Inc., walked away from the $23 billion offer, and now would pursue its original plan of an Initial public offering, reports said.

Wiz co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport wrote in a memo that "Saying no to such humbling offers is tough, but with our exceptional team, I feel confident in making that choice." As per reports, antitrust and investor concerns, among others, are cited to be the reasons for abandoning a potential deal.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that Alphabet was in advanced talks to buy Wiz, which would have been Google's largest ever acquisition.

In the memo, the CEO now stated that the company would focus on its next milestones of an IPO as well as $1 billion in annual recurring revenue. Rappaport had been targeting an IPO as recently as May, before getting the offer from Google.

Rappaport earlier had said that, "Regarding a potential IPO, we are not rushing into it — we have previously indicated that we would move ahead once we reach $1 billion ARR."

The New York-based cloud security startup Wiz was founded in January 2020 by Rappaport, Yinon Costica, Ami Luttwak and Roy Reznik. The company's platform analyzes computing infrastructure hosted in AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, and Kubernetes for combinations of risk factors. It helps companies identify and remove critical risks on cloud platforms, powered by artificial intelligence.

The company had reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue after 18 months of founding, and reached $350 million in annual recurring revenue in 2023.

A deal with Google, if successful, would have nearly doubled the $12 billion valuation of the startup from its most recent round of funding in May, when it raised $1 billion. The latest funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Thrive Capital.

Rappaport then had stated that Wiz expects 2024 to be a year of consolidation in cybersecurity and that it would use the round to fund acquisitions as well as for product and talent development.

Earlier in the year, Wiz acquired Gem Security, a cloud detection and response company, and also signed a letter of intent to acquire cybersecurity startup Lacework.

Meanwhile, the company's founders had sold their first startup, Adallom, to Microsoft in 2015.

Google has been investing in its cloud infrastructure. In 2022, Google acquired cybersecurity company Mandiant for $5.4 billion.

Meanwhile, the company recently rejected a deal for online marketing software company HubSpot.

Its largest deal so far was the purchase of hardware maker Motorola in 2012 for $12.5 billion.