Alphabet has announced it is buying Wiz, allegedly for US$32 billion, as the Google parent doubles down on cybersecurity to sharpen its edge in the cloud-computing race against Amazon and Microsoft.
Wiz had previously rejected a US$23 billion bid from Alphabet in 2024 amid concerns about antitrust approvals in a tough regulatory climate.
Acquiring Wiz will help Google bolster its cloud business with AI-powered cybersecurity solutions that companies use to remove critical risks, helping it compete in an industry benefiting from the rise of generative AI services like ChatGPT.
“Cloud is more important than ever, and attackers are not slowing down. They are already using the most innovative technologies to move faster,” said Wiz CEO and co-founder Assaf Rappaport, who had called Google’s previous offer “humbling”.
One of the fastest-growing software startups, Wiz was valued at $12 billion in a funding round last May. Wiz is compatible with cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft’s Azure as well as Google Cloud
Subject to regulatory approvals and agreements, Wiz will join Google Cloud business and Wiz’s products will continue to be available across all other major cloud services. Alphabet expects the deal to close in 2026.
Mark Smith, a Director in Houlihan Lokey’s Technology Group, commented on the potential acquisition:
“The cybersecurity market itself is vast, global, and high-growth, and crucially for mergers and acquisitions activity, it demonstrates resilience to a range of macroeconomic factors. In Europe alone, the cybersecurity market exceeds $50 billion and is growing at a rate of over 10%. Within this, areas like cloud security are growing significantly faster as businesses need to secure a growing number of applications and data in the cloud. As cybersecurity challenges continue to increase in prevalence and complexity, businesses need to ring fence funding, to protect not only their operations but also their customers, partners, and employees.
The market is in continuous change, driven by the ever-evolving wider landscape: new, increasingly sophisticated threats and heightening regulatory demands mean that businesses are investing more to ensure compliance and meet customer expectations for strong governance. This, in turn, is leading to funding to support further innovation, emerging technologies, and new start-ups. In conjunction, we’re witnessing rapid technological evolution, with AI playing a pivotal role, bringing not only heightened security challenges but also more advanced and robust defences to counteract them.
Strategic acquirers are actively seeking to stay ahead of market developments and remain acquisitive, leading to fierce competition among major consolidators for emerging technologies and capabilities, which in turn drives up valuations. Private equity is also drawn to the sector’s growth and resilience, alongside an active acquirer base to support their own exit opportunities, thus sustaining high PE (price to earnings ratio) demand for cybersecurity platforms.”
