Google Lines Up $23bn Swoop For Startup Wiz Security

Google is planning what could be the biggest acquisition in the firm’s history, according to reports.

The tech giant is in advanced talks to buy Wiz Security for an estimated $23bn, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal over the weekend.

Wiz Security describes itself as a cloud security company, offering container and Kubernetes protection, cloud security posture management, vulnerability management, cloud app protection, IAC scanning and more.

Founded in 2020, the rapidly growing company was apparently valued recently at $12bn.

Google has bought big in the cybersecurity space before, splashing out $5.4bn on incident response specialist Mandiant in 2022 and Israeli security startup Siemplify for $500m earlier the same year.

Read more on Google acquisitions: Google Acquires its First Non-American Cybersecurity Firm

Later that year, Google sought to bring all of its cloud capabilities under one roof with the launch of Chronicle Security Operations. That brought together Chronicle’s security information and event management (SIEM) capabilities, with security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) solutions from Siemplify, and threat intelligence from Google Cloud and Mandiant.

The move comes at a time when cloud investment and cyber-threat volumes are surging. According to one estimate, 89% of global organizations currently have a multi-cloud strategy and 73% have embraced the hybrid cloud.

However, there were over 3200 data breaches in the US last year, a 72% increase from the previous all-time high of 2021, impacting an estimated 363 million individuals.

Google’s cloud business increased its revenue by 28% to $9.57 billion in Q1 2024, boosted by demand for generative AI services.

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