Google’s parent company letters have once again held senior talks to get people familiar with the deals told TechCrunch’s cloud cybersecurity startup Wiz. The two companies were close to getting deals at a $23 billion valuation last summer, but Transaction failed accomplish.
The person said the discussion was more expensive. The reported price is about $30 billion Wall Street Journal.
Thomas Kurian, head of Google’s cloud division, leads the effort again.
Google Cloud believes Wiz’s Cloud Security products are very suitable for its customer base, and Wiz’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) is also attractive. Last July, it was $500 million Plans to reach $1 billion in ARR by 2025, TechCrunch reported at the time.
Even so, the $30 billion price tag could be a pretty high price tag. Wiz shuts down last external funding round $1 billion is worth $12 billion Last May. Its valuation reportedly jumped to $16 billion in employee bidding quotes late last year.
Although Wiz said it has no plans to be made public in 2025, it hired Fazal Merchant, a former Dreamworks executive and Tanium as chief financial officer. Sometimes, hiring a CFO is a sign of preparing books for public offerings.
According to the Wall Street Journal, one of the reasons for the failure of negotiations is that the two companies cannot reach a consensus on WIZ as a separate department or integrating it into Google Cloud.
The familiar said high regulatory scrutiny of large deals during the Biden administration led to a deal crash last summer.
Other investors told TechCrunch they saw an increase in M&A activity. In most cases, the return negotiation form is less restrictive than the hopes of FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson than former chairman Lina Khan, but a few people familiar with such negotiations say.
Wiz in New York and Israel was founded in 2020 by four former Israeli officers who previously co-founded a cloud cybersecurity company called Adallom, which Microsoft later obtained $320 million.
Wiz supporters include Andreessen Horowitz, Cyberstarts, Index Ventures, Insight Partners and Sequoia.
A Wiz spokesperson declined to comment on the deal conversation.
