Google closes $32B Wiz deal — the largest acquisition in its history
Google has closed its $32 billion all-cash acquisition of Wiz, the Israeli cloud security startup — the largest deal in Google's history and the biggest acquisition of a venture-backed startup ever. The transaction caps a dramatic reversal: in 2024, Wiz rejected a $23 billion offer from Google, choosing instead to pursue an IPO. Talks resumed in early 2025 before a new agreement was struck.
The four co-founders — Assaf Rappaport , Ami Luttwak , Yinon Costica , and Roy Reznik , who met during service in Israel's elite intelligence Unit 8200 — each held 10% equity, netting more than $2 billion each after tax and lifting their combined net worth to $9.2 billion.
Wiz sits at the intersection of three accelerating trends: AI, cloud adoption, and security spend. As organisations rush to deploy AI workloads, their attack surfaces are expanding rapidly — and Wiz's agentless platform, which scans cloud environments across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud simultaneously without requiring software on individual devices, directly addresses that problem. The company's revenue reportedly crossed $500 million annually before closing.
Google Cloud holds roughly 11% of the cloud market, trailing AWS at 31% and Microsoft Azure at 25%. Security has become a key differentiator in enterprise cloud decisions, and Wiz gives Google a credible, cross-platform answer to Microsoft's growing security bundle.
Large acquisitions carry integration risk. Google's $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola in 2012 ultimately disappointed, and Wiz's 900 employees will need to maintain innovation velocity inside a much larger organisation. Wiz also carries legal baggage: a $200 million lawsuit from Israeli startup Raftt alleges its acquisition was used to extract employees and technology, and an earlier suit from rival Orca Security over agentless security IP was only dismissed this year.
Some industry observers have also flagged Wiz's aggressive sales tactics and its close ties with early backer Cyberstarts, whose investment model once included financial incentives for chief information security officers.
The returns from this deal will reverberate across the startup ecosystem for years. Index Ventures, Wiz's largest shareholder, is expected to net $4 billion — a return of more than 200 times its Series A investment. Sequoia is projected to make more than 25 times its money. Insight Partners stands to take home $2.7 billion. For the Israeli tech ecosystem in particular, the outcome sets a new benchmark for what is achievable, and will likely fuel the next generation of founders coming out of Unit 8200 and similar programmes. As Index partner Shardul Shah put it, the deal's most lasting impact may be the imagination it unlocks for entrepreneurs globally.
Sources:
Forbes
TechCrunch
The Tech Buzz
A.M.
