Why it matters:$1 billion in new venture funding at a $12 billion valuation, which included a small secondary transaction for early employees and investors.The company was founded in 2020 by Assaf Rappaport, Yinon Costica, Ami Luttwak and Roy Reznik after leaving Microsoft. The four had landed at the tech giant in 2015 after it acquired their prior startup, Adallom, for $320 million.
Wiz quickly set about winning over large enterprises as customers, achieving $100 million in annual recurring revenue in 18 months .Although Rappaport says he doesn't feel pressure from his investors to make any further acquisitions, M&A is a big reason for the large pile of cash his company just raised."I saw in my previous work, and we see it in the market … some companies who cannot innovate, you know, outsource their innovation through acquisitions," Rappaport tells Axios.
"That's the PE approach … take an existing technology, put it in an existing machine, and like the 'one plus one equals three' ... we'll try to squeeze the lemon as much as we can. "When you're acquiring a company, you're not looking for a good deal, you're looking for a great company.… And it typically comes with a premium price. So that's one thing that is not very PE, because they're much more sensitive about the pricing."Wiz is also very intentional about its post-acquisition approach.
Lacework has raised $1.8 billion in funding and was last valued at $8.3 billion. Wiz ultimately made an initial offer of about $160 million before revising it down to less than $100 million, following a few weeks of diligence, according to a source familiar with the discussions.The company wants to build out an actual corporate development team to focus on M&A and investments, and start checking things off the list for an eventual IPO, like hiring a CFO — and hitting $1 billion in ARR.