Overview
Wiz built cloud security software that connects to a company's cloud accounts, discovers resources, and links security findings to their context. A security team can see whether a vulnerable machine is internet-facing and what data it can reach, rather than treating each finding as an isolated alert.[1]
Founded in 2020, Wiz grew quickly as enterprises moved workloads across several cloud providers. Google completed its acquisition on March 11, 2026. Wiz continues under its own brand within Google Cloud and says its products remain available across major clouds.[2]
Founding Story
Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, Yinon Costica, and Roy Reznik had worked together at Adallom, a cloud security company Microsoft acquired in 2015. They then worked on Microsoft's cloud security business. In 2020, they left to start Wiz.[3]
The team had encountered fragmented security tools and the volume of alerts that came with them. Announcing Wiz's launch in December 2020, Rappaport described the problem as “complex, fragmented” tools and “too many alerts.” Wiz announced a $100 million Series A at launch, led by Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, and Cyberstarts.[4]
The team entered with an advantage that a new founder could not manufacture quickly: prior experience selling cloud security and building products inside a major cloud provider. That experience is a plausible contributor to Wiz's speed, though it does not isolate how much of its growth came from the founders' reputation, product design, or the market itself.
Timeline
- 2020: The four former Adallom founders start Wiz and announce its Series A.[3][4]
- 2022: Wiz reports reaching $100 million in annual recurring revenue after growing from $1 million over 18 months.[5]
- 2024: Wiz acquires Gem Security and raises $1 billion in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, and Thrive.[6][7]
- 2025–2026: Google announces its agreement to acquire Wiz in March 2025 and completes it in March 2026.[8][2]
What They Built
A customer connects cloud accounts through provider APIs. Wiz inventories resources and analyzes configuration, vulnerabilities, identities, and exposure. Its security graph represents relationships among those items. It can connect a public endpoint to a vulnerable machine and the permissions or data that machine can reach. The resulting path gives an engineer a reason to fix one issue before another.[1]
This approach changes the unit of work. A conventional list may contain many vulnerabilities; a path combines several conditions into a potential route to an asset. A vulnerability with no meaningful access may deserve a different priority from one on a public machine with privileged access. The graph is a model of possible exposure, so teams still need to verify findings and fix the underlying configuration.
Wiz says its initial deployment uses cloud API integrations without installing an agent on every workload. It also offers optional runtime sensors for deeper visibility. Its present platform includes Wiz Code, Wiz Cloud, and Wiz Defend in one console. These products cover different points in the lifecycle, from code and cloud configuration to detection and response.[9]
The addition of Gem Security in 2024 extended Wiz from identifying risky conditions toward detecting and investigating cloud attacks. Wiz later incorporated Gem's work into Wiz Defend. The move addressed a practical limit of posture checks: knowing that a resource is exposed is different from knowing whether someone is attacking it.[6][10]
Market Position
Target Customers
Wiz sold to organizations operating cloud infrastructure, with security teams and developers both involved in resolving risks. In 2021, Wiz named customers including Salesforce, Blackstone, and The Home Depot. Google said at the 2026 close that Wiz was trusted by half of the Fortune 100; this was a company claim, not an independent audit.[11][2]
Market Size
Cloud security is a large category, but a broad market estimate does not establish the revenue available to a particular product. The available sources do not provide a reliable comparable market size for Wiz at launch and acquisition.
Competition
Wiz faced cloud providers' own security products and independent vendors. Orca Security also offers agentless scanning and correlates workload and configuration data, so agentless deployment alone was not a durable exclusive advantage.[12] Cloud providers have privileged distribution inside their own platforms; a vendor that works across clouds must earn trust and maintain integrations with each of them.
Business Model
Wiz sells cloud security software to organizations. Its current pricing is generally based on workload count and the features a customer selects; exact prices are quoted to each organization.[9] This gives the vendor a way to grow with a customer's cloud footprint, but the public sources do not establish its average contract value, margins, retention, or customer acquisition costs.
Traction
Wiz reported that annual recurring revenue grew from $1 million to $100 million in 18 months, reaching that figure in 2022. Annual recurring revenue is a run-rate measure, not cash collected or profit. The company also said it had more than 400 employees at that point.[5] Those figures show rapid adoption, but do not reveal how efficiently Wiz acquired or retained customers.
Outcome and evolution
A cross-cloud view became valuable to a cloud provider
Google's stated rationale was to combine its own security products with Wiz's view of cloud environments. The useful tension is that Wiz's value to many customers depends on working across competing clouds, while Google also sells one of those clouds. At closing, Google committed to retain Wiz's brand and support the major cloud platforms.[2]
This is a structural advantage and a dependency at once. An independent security vendor can map risks across providers, but it needs continued access to their APIs and a reason for customers to trust its neutrality. Google gains the technology and relationships, while its commitment to multicloud support helps preserve the product's existing usefulness. Future execution will determine whether customers experience that commitment in practice.
Expansion preceded the sale
Wiz did not sell only a point-in-time scanner. Rappaport called 2024 “the year of security consolidation.” Wiz acquired Gem to add cloud detection and response, and raised a large round to expand. That broader product offered Google more than a single feature. It also made integration and consolidation harder: customers still need to understand which capabilities they are buying and how those capabilities work together.[6][7]
An alternative explanation for the acquisition is that Google primarily bought access to a fast-growing customer base rather than the graph itself. The public announcements support both strategic motives but do not disclose how Google valued each one. They also do not establish a failure at Wiz: its product continues to operate under a new owner.
Key Lessons
- Connect findings to consequences. Wiz's graph linked exposure, identities, and resources, turning a vulnerability list into a way to prioritize work.
- Reduce installation friction, then cover the gaps. API connections made initial adoption easier; optional sensors reflect the need for deeper runtime evidence.
- Treat platform neutrality as an operating promise. Wiz's cross-cloud value depends on integrations and customer trust after its acquisition by one cloud provider.
- Do not confuse growth with unit economics. Wiz's reported recurring revenue shows adoption, while public evidence leaves its margins and acquisition costs unknown.
Sources
- Wiz, attack path analysis
- Google, acquisition close
- Axios, founders and acquisition strategy
- Wiz, launch and Series A
- Wiz, recurring revenue milestone
- Wiz, Gem Security acquisition
- Wiz, 2024 financing
- Google, acquisition agreement
- Wiz, product and pricing FAQ
- Wiz, Defend
- Wiz, Series C
- Orca, SideScanning