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Leidi.com Lotte July 23

According to foreign media reports, cybersecurity startup Wiz Inc. rejected a $23 billion acquisition offer from Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. and insisted on its initial public offering plan.

The rejection is a blow to Alphabet as it tries to catch up with Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. in the hotly competitive cloud services market.

Alphabet, which bought cybersecurity company Mandiant for $5.4 billion two years ago in its second-largest acquisition, could have used Wiz to round out its security offerings.

Based in New York, Wiz connects to cloud storage providers such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure and scans data stored there for security risks.

"It was difficult to turn down an offer, but with our amazing team, I felt confident in making this choice," said Assaf Rappaport, CEO of Wiz. "Let me get straight to the point, the next milestones for the company are achieving $1 billion in annual recurring revenue and an IPO."

An acquisition target as large as Wiz is unusual for a large tech company like Alphabet and is likely to attract more scrutiny from antitrust regulators. Google already faces multiple antitrust challenges, including a lawsuit from the U.S. Justice Department alleging it abuses its search dominance and another lawsuit over its digital advertising tools.

Representatives for Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment after regular business hours. Google has been trying to bolster its cybersecurity capabilities, a key part of its strategy to gain share in cloud computing. While Google still lags behind Amazon and Microsoft in that market, the search giant has been making progress, with the unit reporting a profit for the first time last year.

The deal with Mandiant boosts Alphabet’s credibility in the space. At a conference in Las Vegas in 2024, Google demonstrated how its Gemini AI model can help customers analyze threats and address potential vulnerabilities.

Wiz was founded in 2020 and was valued at $12 billion in a funding round in May 2024, attracting investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Thrive Capital.

Investors and analysts credit Wiz’s rapid rise to its early identification of cloud security as an uncrowded space with a rich and growing customer base. Wiz says it counts 40% of the Fortune 100 as customers and has $350 million in annual recurring revenue.

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