The American giant has decided to take out its checkbook to acquire Wiz, an American-Israeli startup specializing in cybersecurity. Google will pay $32 billion (approximately €29.3 billion) to acquire Wiz, after an initial approach last summer. This acquisition, which is expected to be finalized in 2026, is the largest ever made by Google and its parent company Alphabet. It surpasses the previous record, which was the acquisition of Motorola Mobility in 2011 for $12.5 billion (a company since sold to Lenovo).
Who is Wiz?
Founded in 2020 by former Microsoft executives and cybersecurity experts from the Israeli army, Wiz specializes in protecting cloud infrastructures. Little known to the general public, the young company counts among its clients half of the 100 largest American companies and 1,700 employees. Wiz has carried out $500 million in revenue in 2024 and its forecasts exceed a billion in 2025.
What's in it for Google?
$32 billion. No company spends such a sum without having a specific idea behind it. The American search giant will be able to strengthen Google Cloud against its main rivals, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. These two companies, essential players in the market cloud computing, are also partners of Wiz.
Google has no intention of pulling the rug out from under its competitors. Wiz products will remain accessible on all competing platforms (Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle), indicates the press release. This clarification is not accidental and should prevent Google from being accused to restrict competition by antitrust authorities, recalls Le Monde. In this cloud war, Google has already accused Microsoft of aiming for a monopoly.
This acquisition, which marks a major turning point for Google, confirms the need to position itself in the field of cybersecurity. "Artificial intelligence presents new risks, but also new opportunities", assures Google boss Sundar Pichai. Wiz will maintain its operational autonomy, with its headquarters remaining in Israel, and Assaf Rappaport, CEO of Wiz, will remain in his role for at least three years. Through this combination, Google and Wiz plan to:
- Provide a comprehensive security platform to improve security design, operations, and automation for all customers in the age of AI;
- Automate security to strengthen cybersecurity teams;
- Reduce the costs of implementing and managing security controls;
- Protect against new AI threats, prevent breaches, and improve incident response;
- Drive multi-cloud security and the use of multiple clouds, thereby promoting innovation and the adoption of cloud computing.
The cloud, a growing target for cyberattacks
This operation also illustrates the need to strengthen ourselves in the face of the increase in cyberattacks targeting cloud environments. ANSSI warned of this in its State of the threat to cloud computing, citing the growing use of cloud services as attack infrastructure.
Attackers use a variety of methods, including: lucrative attacks (randomware, theft of authentication data), espionage attacks, and destabilization attacks, such as DDoS attacks.
0 Comments