A new all-cash deal came together after talks fizzled last summer
Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport is of course a graduate of the Technion, and after studying computer science on one of the special programmes that the Technion offers, he went on to set up his first company which he then sold to Microsoft. Assaf has appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine and was selected by Time magazine as one of the world’s leaders shaping the future. This is Israel’s biggest ever exit.
Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL -3.44%) agreed to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz for $32 billion, in a massive bid to bolster its cloud business that has struggled to keep up with rivals.
The all-cash deal would be Google’s largest ever and also the biggest deal struck so far in 2025. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday evening that the talks between the two companies were advanced and an agreement could be reached soon.
Alphabet had been close to a roughly $23 billion deal for Wiz last summer, the Journal previously reported.
The talks fell apart, however, as Wiz and some of its investors had concerns about the time it would take for a deal to clear regulatory hurdles, among other issues.
Bankers and CEOs came into the year hoping for big deals, but market volatility and Washington turmoil have sapped confidence. Google moving to strike its biggest deal ever, and the biggest deal of the year, would be a test of the Trump administration’s antitrust appetite and a barometer for other tech deals.
Wiz, which offers cybersecurity software for cloud computing, is based in New York with additional offices in the U.S. and Israel. The startup partners with a number of the biggest cloud companies, including Amazon.com and Microsoft as well as Google, according to its website.
The acquisition could help boost Alphabet’s efforts in cloud computing, an important and growing business but one where it has lagged behind peers.
Wiz has enhanced security features that could help Google win more customers to its cloud service in a fiercely competitive market where demand is booming partly because of generative AI companies’ need for computing power. Google said Tuesday the deal would help artificial-intelligence companies get better security and use more than one cloud service.
A Wiz acquisition would also dwarf the size of Google’s largest deal to date, its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility that closed in 2012. Google also spent $2.1 billion on Fitbit in 2021—a deal that hit regulatory hurdles after it was announced—and $3.2 billion on Nest Labs in 2014. Other acquisitions over the years have included YouTube, DoubleClick, Looker and Waze.
Google will be testing regulators’ willingness to approve this deal at the same time it is already dealing with two antitrust lawsuits. In one case over its search business, a judge already ruled it is a monopoly and the parties are awaiting a remedies trial after the government (under former President Joe Biden) proposed forcing it to sell its Chrome browser. And in another case over Google’s ad technology business, the trial is over and they are awaiting a verdict.
Wiz’s valuation has soared since it was founded in 2020 by Chief Executive Assaf Rappaport and several colleagues, and is considered one of the fastest-growing startups of all time. It was valued at $16 billion in an employee tender offer late last year, the Journal reported.
The company is backed by prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalists including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures and Greenoaks.
In an email to employees last July, Wiz’s Rappaport said the company would be aiming for an initial public offering. But the IPO markets have remained quiet in the past year, and Wiz had since resumed deal conversations with several parties, according to people familiar with the matter.
Wiz will become an offering of Google Cloud and will continue to work on other cloud providers run by rival tech giants, the companies said.
“Wiz has achieved so much in a relatively short period, but cybersecurity moves at warp speed and so must we,” Rappaport wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “Becoming part of Google Cloud is effectively strapping a rocket to our backs: it will accelerate our rate of innovation faster than what we could achieve as a standalone company.”
Wiz’s founders launched the company after selling their first startup, Adallom, to Microsoft in 2015 for $320 million. They worked at the tech giant for several years before leaving to start Wiz.