Sources tell several outlets that Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is close to agreeing to pay roughly $23 billion to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz. It would accelerate Google’s efforts in cybersecurity and be the company’s largest acquisition to date.
The Wall Street Journal first broke the news of the late-stage negotiations, and Bloomberg and other outlets followed suit.
The WSJ also mentioned that a transaction with 2020-founded Wiz might be completed shortly. Wiz completed a $1 billion fundraising round in early May, valuing the company at $12 billion. In 2023, its yearly recurring income reached $350 million.
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Acquiring Wiz may help Google’s cloud computing division, which is currently trailing Microsoft and Amazon.com’s arm Amazon Web Services. Although Microsoft has powerful cybersecurity tools, hacking has affected its Azure cloud business.
A comprehensive regulatory review may be applied to a Google-Wiz transaction. In recent years, the European Union and the United States have stepped up their antitrust actions against Google and other digital giants.
Furthermore, Wiz has been a market leader in the rapidly expanding cybersecurity space for Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) goods and services. According to Bank of America, the five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the CNAPP market is expected to be 24%, rising from $7.2 billion in 2023 to $16.3 billion in 2027.
Additionally, Wiz thoroughly evaluates clients’ whole cloud environments before correlating a large number of signals to identify the vulnerabilities that attackers may exploit.
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A Google-Wiz agreement may cause other cybersecurity stocks to change.
Google was previously connected to acquisition discussions for the provider of marketing software, HubSpot (HUBS). Following news last week that discussions were concluded, HUBS stock fell. HubSpot, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company, provides small and midsize companies with marketing and sales tools.
