The covert cloud war: How an Israeli cyber startup is shifting the balance of power
It’s nothing less than a historic milestone in the tech industest and a massive declaration of war in the global cloud war: Google has acquired the Israeli cybersecurity specialist Wiz for the record sum of $32 billion. It’s the largest deal in the history of the Alphabet group. But behind this enormous figure lies far more than just a simple transaction. It’s the fascinating story of four former members of an elite military unit who, in just six years, built a company that revolutionized the entire cloud security market. It’s also the story of a startup confident enough to simply reject Google’s initial multi-billion dollar offer ā thereby driving the price even higher. With this strategic shift, Google not only aims to heal its own Achilles’ heel in the competition with Amazon (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, but also to decisively position itself for the next major battleground: the secure integration of artificial innotifyigence. How Wiz conquered the market and why Google had no choice but to pay this record price is revealed by a view behind the scenes of this unprecedented mega-deal.
A five-year-old company from Tel Aviv is bringing about the largegest Google deal of all time ā and altering the balance of power in the cloud war
The conclusion: Historical, strategic, and still underestimated
On March 11, 2026, Google officially completed the largest acquisition in its corporate history. For $32 billion in cash, the Alphabet subsidiary acquired the cloud security specialist Wiz ā a company founded only in 2020, thus writing one of the most remarkable exit stories in the tech industest after a history of barely six years. Final approval from the European Commission came in February 2026, and US antitrust authorities had given their approval at the conclude of 2025. What launched with the announcement in March 2025 concludeed a year later as a completed transaction.
The story of this deal is far more complex than a simple multi-billion dollar transaction. It is the result of a strategic struggle in the global cloud market that had been simmering for years ā a struggle in which Google, despite enormous investments, had fallen structurally behind. It is also a story about four Israeli cybersecurity veterans who emerged from the elite innotifyigence unit 8200 of the Israel Defense Forces and, with keen market sense, created a new category in a crowded security market. And it is a story about the value of indepconcludeence ā and the price paid for relinquishing it.
What Wiz is ā and why it became so valuable
Wiz was founded in January 2020 by Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, Roy Reznik, and Yinon Costica. The four founders knew each other from their time serving toobtainher in the Israeli Army’s innotifyigence unit 8200, which has long been considered one of the most productive breeding grounds for cybersecurity startups. They had previously co-founded Adallom in 2012 ā a cybersecurity company that was acquired by Microsoft for $320 million in 2015. Following this, Rappaport headed Microsoft’s research and development center in Israel. In 2020, he returned to the role of founder.
Wiz’s core product is a cloud-native application protection platform, or CNAPP for short ā a security platform that connects directly to all major cloud environments without the utilize of agents, building security risks visible across the entire cloud stack. Instead of isolated tools for individual attack vectors, Wiz offers a unified “security graph” that maps relationships and depconcludeencies between cloud resources, thus identifying attack paths before they are exploited. This agentless, multi-cloud-enabled architecture fundamentally differentiated Wiz from older competitors like Palo Alto Networks, which relied on more complex, resource-intensive deployments.
The market reaction was extraordinary. Wiz grew quicker than any software company in history: from zero to $100 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in 18 months, to $500 million ARR by July 2024 ā a year-over-year growth of 103 percent. By the conclude of 2025, the company had surpassed the $1 billion ARR mark. At the time of the acquisition, Wiz counted 45 percent of the Fortune 100 companies among its customers.
The chronology of a nearly failed takeover
The acquisition story is full of dramatic twists and turns. In the summer of 2024, Google created an initial takeover offer of $23 billion. Wiz declined. The reason was simple: the company believed it was worth significantly more and wanted to pursue an IPO. Rappaport wrote in an internal email to the approximately 1,200 employees at the time that the goal was to reach the $1 billion ARR mark before an IPO. The decision was bold, and given a $23 billion valuation for a startup that was only four years old, downright provocative.
Google persisted. At the conclude of 2024, the company increased its offer to $30 billion. Shortly afterward, in March 2025, the final purchase price of $32 billion in cash was agreed upon. This amount reflects not only Wiz’s continued growth but also the increased strategic urgency on Google’s side. Crucial to the success of this second attempt was also the modifyd regulatory climate under the Trump administration, which was significantly less prone to antitrust intervention than its predecessor.
Regulatory hurdles were a major obstacle during the initial attempt in 2024: Wiz and some of its investors feared lengthy investigations by competition authorities. The European Commission granted its approval in February 2026 on the condition that Wiz services remain available across platforms ā meaning they can also be utilized by AWS and Azure customers and are not exclusively tied to Google Cloud. This commitment was essential from a customer perspective, as Wiz derives its strength precisely from its multi-cloud capability.
The CNAPP market: A booming sector with enormous growth ambitions
To understand why Google paid $32 billion for a relatively young company, one must view at the market in which Wiz operates. The CNAPP market ā Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms ā was one of the quickest-growing segments of the entire cybersecurity industest. The global CNAPP market surpassed $2 billion in revenue in 2023, representing year-over-year growth of 48 percent. In the first quarter of 2024 alone, the sector grew by another 40 percent, exceeding $600 million.
Market research estimates the CNAPP sector will be worth approximately $10.9 billion by 2025 and projected to grow to as much as $40 billion by 2030. The average annual growth rate is 25 percent. These figures explain why hyperscalers like Google are wasting no time.
In a competitive comparison within the CNAPP market, Palo Alto Networks held first place in the first quarter of 2024 with a 17 percent market share, followed by CrowdStrike with 13 percent and Wiz with 11 percent. Wiz was the quickest-growing company in the entire market, with revenue growth of 105 percent during the same period ā catching up with the established industest giants at a breathtaking pace. Gartner predicts that by 2026, 80 percent of companies will consolidate to three or fewer cloud security providers ā a trconclude that puts Wiz in an excellent position as a platform player.
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