Cloud security startup Wiz has reportedly rejected a $23 billion acquisition bid by Google.
Instead, the company will go ahead with plans for an initial public offering (IPO), CNBC reported late Monday (July 22), citing an internal memo written by Wiz co-founder Assaf Rappaport
“Saying no to such humbling offers is tough,” Rappaport wrote.
A source familiar with Wiz’s thinking pointed to investor and antitrust concerns as part of the company’s reason for walking away from the deal.
The memo said Wiz will now focus on its IPO and reaching $1 billion in yearly recurring revenue, which CNBC says had been its targets before the news of its discussions with Google emerged earlier this month.
The deal would have been Google’s largest ever acquisition, while also almost doubling Wiz’s valuation from the $12 billion it achieved with its last funding round in May.
Wiz’s cloud security offering, the CNBC report notes, would have helped Google compete with the likes Microsoft and Amazon in the cloud space.
These efforts are happening as regulators are pushing for stronger cloud security protections, as noted here last week,
PYMNTS has been monitoring the rapid evolution of the cyber threat landscape, spotlighted by the number of attacks this summer. Among the incidents was the theft of a “significant volume of data” stolen last month from at least 165 customers of multi-cloud data warehousing platform Snowflake — in which the personal information from “nearly all” of AT&T’s wireless customers was stolen.
“This heightened emphasis on cybersecurity coincides with a broader debate surrounding data security in the connected economy, particularly in connected workplaces and smart homes, where the growing use of connected devices highlights new vulnerabilities, given the vast amounts of personal data they gather,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this month.
Meanwhile, the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Fraud Management in Online Transactions” found that 82% of eCommerce merchants suffered cyberattacks or data breaches in the past year, with 47% saying the incidents cost them both revenue and customers.
As noted here earlier this month, the ongoing breaches showcase the need for businesses to shift from a purely preventive approach to one that balances prevention with robust response and recovery.
“It is essentially an adversarial game; criminals are out to make money, and the [business] community needs to curtail that activity. What’s different now is that both sides are armed with some really impressive technology,” Michael Shearer, chief solutions officer at Hawk AI, said in an interview with PYMNTS.