Google Near Deal to Buy Cybersecurity Startup Wiz For $23 Billion

At Blackwired, we naturally consider cybersecurity to be the most important issue of our time, and apparently industry giant Google thinks so as well. Their major tech competitors, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, both have cloud security offerings that surpass Google's, and the company has been trying to close that gap for some time with strategic acquisitions. In 2022, Google acquired the cybersecurity firm Mandiant for 5.4 billion USD, and also bought Siemplify, a threat detection company, for 500 million USD. However, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the latest acquisition throws all others firmly in the shade. The report indicates that Google is in late stage talks to acquire the cloud security company Wiz at a price of 23 billion USD, the largest price Google’s parent company Alphabet has ever paid for an acquisition.

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Wiz produces a cloud native application protection platform (CNAPP), which is a very highly valued product in the current security environment. Bank of America forecasts that the CNAPP market will increase from 7.2 billion in 2023 to 16.3 billion USD in 2027, and Google is clearly interested in having a piece of it. This acquisition, if it goes through, would synergize well with Google’s acquisition of Mandiant, which is also a cloud computing business. This acquisition is likely to shake up the cybersecurity market and may raise antitrust concerns in both the US and Europe, but it clearly shows how seriously the largest companies in the world are taking cybersecurity. Other companies should do their best to follow suit and invest in their own cybersecurity solutions.