Cybersecurity giant Wiz has rejected the $23 billion acquisition offer from Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Google was eyeing a takeover of the cloud cybersecurity startup, while the New York Times had reported that the transaction was in the advanced stages of discussion but wasn’t a sure thing by any stretch, a cautionary note vindicated by Wiz turning away from the deal this week.

Meanwhile, an internal Wiz email reportedly said: “While we are flattered by offers we have received, we have chosen to continue on our path to building Wiz.”

In a recent memo, Wiz’s Chief Executive, Assaf Rappaport, outlined the company’s ambitious goals in “building Wiz”, which include achieving $1 billion in annual recurring revenue and preparing for an initial public offering:

Saying no to such humbling offers is tough, but with our exceptional team, I feel confident in making that choice. The market validation we have experienced following this news only reinforces our goal – creating a platform that both security and development teams love.”

A $23 billion acquisition of Wiz would have been almost double Google’s previous largest acquisition when it bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in 2012.

However, the NYT also suggested that there was mooted scepticism the deal would pass regulatory scrutiny, with regulators increasingly vigilant around anti-competitive dealmaking.

Wiz says it secures corporate cloud infrastructure “by creating a normalising layer between cloud environments,” allowing businesses to “rapidly identify and remove critical risks.”

Google’s acquisition of this specialist cloud cybersecurity firm and the integration of its tools and solutions across its portfolio would have significantly impacted the industry, especially at a time when Microsoft is facing ongoing criticism for its own security vulnerabilities and its relative monopoly across the vast majority of industries — only brought further into the spotlight by the tech giant’s role in last week’s global IT outage.

As of Tuesday morning, neither Wiz nor Google had issued official statements about the end of acquisition discussions.

Cybersecurity is clearly critical for Google in 2024. In May, Google introduced Google Threat Intelligence, which fuses an in-depth view of threats with Gemini’s AI capabilities to “supercharge” the process. Gemini, formerly Bard, is Google’s multimodal large language AI model built to pinpoint security threats and create summaries of its findings.

While Google appears to be prioritising cloud security this year, it is also part of a long-term strategy. In 2022, the tech giant acquired two security firms: the Israeli security startup Siemplify for $500 million and Mandiant for $5.4 billion.



from UC Today https://ift.tt/mBVQYMx