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Leidi.com Lotte July 15

Google parent Alphabet is in talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal could be worth as much as $23 billion. That would make it Alphabet's largest acquisition to date. The two sides have yet to reach an agreement and the talks could still fail.

The talks come after Alphabet shelved its recent efforts to acquire customer relationship management company HubSpot Inc. Like the HubSpot deal, a big acquisition like Wiz is unusual for a large tech company like Alphabet, which faces intense scrutiny from antitrust regulators.

Google already faces multiple antitrust challenges, including a lawsuit from the U.S. Justice Department alleging it abuses its dominance in online search and another over its digital advertising tools.

Alphabet has been increasing investments in its cloud customer business, including providing customers with more generative artificial intelligence tools. Although Google still lags behind Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. in the cloud computing market, Alphabet reported that its cloud unit has achieved profitability for several consecutive quarters after years of losses.

The acquisition of cloud and cybersecurity company Wiz could help Google catch up to Microsoft and Amazon in the increasingly competitive cloud market.

Founded in 2020, Wiz connects to cloud storage providers such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure and identifies and scans data stored in the cloud, finding and eliminating security risks.

Wiz has revenues of approximately $350 million in 2023 and works with 40% of the Fortune 100. Wiz recently raised $1 billion in a private round of funding at a valuation of $12 billion, attracting investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Thrive Capital.

LeiDi was founded by media person Lei Jianping. Please indicate the source if reprinting.