Google’s parent company Alphabet is in advanced talks to acquire Israeli cloud cybersecurity startup Wiz in a deal worth some $23 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
If the agreement is inked, it would represent the California tech giant’s biggest-ever buy (scorching the previous record of $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility in 2012). It would also mark a significant achievement for Israel’s high-tech sector.
“This is the largest acquisition to ever happen in the Israeli high-tech sector. It’s a sign of the strength of the Israeli tech hub,” Dror Bin, CEO of the Israel Innovation Authority, told JNS on Monday.
“It’s a sign of confidence that giants like Google show by making such an acquisition in Israel,” he added.
Richie Torres, Member of the US House of Representatives, said the deal represesents “a $23 billion middle finger to the BDS movement against the Jewish State”. The politician, who has been outspoken in his support for Israel, continued “The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction movement should itself be boycotted, divested, and sanctioned”.
Intel’s $15 billion pickup of Mobileye in 2017 is the current Israeli record holder.
For its part, Google has shown interest in the Israeli market, in 2013 purchasing Waze for $1.1 billion, creating the Jewish state’s first domestic unicorn (a startup reaching $1 billion in valuation without being listed on the stock market).
While Wiz is headquartered in New York City with nearly a thousand employees scattered across North America and Europe, most of its engineering team is based in Tel Aviv, where the 40-year-old Israeli co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport was born.
Since its founding in Israel in 2020, the economic worth of the firm, which offers cybersecurity software for cloud computing, has skyrocketed. The company in May announced a funding round of $1 billion at a staggering $12 billion valuation.
According to Wiz, the company hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue after 18 months and in February of this year reached $350 million in annual recurring revenue, with a 40% market share of Fortune 100 customers.
Wiz already partners with Google and other leading cloud companies, including Amazon and Microsoft.
It plans to hire 400 more people in 2024.
The local Israeli ecosystem consists of 9,000 different high-tech companies including early stage and early growth companies, large enterprises and multinationals.
Since the start of the war against Hamas in Gaza, triggered by the Palestinian terror group’s Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, the high-tech sector has worked to maintain its services to global customers and deliver on promises made to investors.
High-tech professionals launched the #NoMatterWhat campaign shortly after the beginning of the war to send the message that they continue to maintain the highest standards, despite some companies having had up to 20% of their workforces mobilized to serve the country.
“The Israel Innovation Authority, the government agency responsible for the high-tech sector, also continues to invest in the local ecosystem since the war started,” Bin told JNS.
“We have launched several programs and funds to secure early stage companies in Israel and make sure that the next wave of growth and innovation will occur,” he said.
“The fundamentals of the Israeli tech sector did not change. We still have the best entrepreneurs in the world. I think that this type of deal shows it is indeed the case,” he added.
While there are few details about what the acquisition will mean for Wiz’s operations, Bin sees it as very promising.
“Google is buying Wiz for a reason. It’s a great company with great leaders and great employees and most of all amazing technological solutions. I assume Google is buying it to keep growing the business,” Bin said.
“One of the amazing things about Wiz is that the company only started a few years ago and they managed to create a very high growth rate in its revenues and evaluation. and I am sure Google will continue this pace, investment and further maintain the high growth rate of this company,” he added.
