Israeli cloud security giant Wiz is sticking to its original plan and pursuing an IPO, walking away from a possible $23 billion deal with Google’s parent company Alphabet.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Alphabet had been nearing a deal to acquire Wiz. This would have been Alphabet’s largest acquisition.
However, Wiz’s CEO, Assaf Rappaport, told employees in a memo obtained by several media outlets that the deal is off and the company will pursue an initial public offering, as originally planned.
CNBC learned from people familiar with the matter that antitrust and investor concerns played a part in the deal falling apart.
Wiz is backed by prominent venture capital outfits like Andreesen Horowitz, Greylock and Sequoia Capital. It has raised $1.9 billion over several funding rounds and was most recently valued at $12 billion.
Rappaport told employees that the company would continue focusing — in addition to the IPO — on achieving an annual recurring revenue of $1 billion.
Headquartered in New York City, Wiz provides a cloud security platform designed to help enterprises find and fix vulnerabilities that could lead to breaches and data exposure.
The company recently announced the discovery of SAP AI Core vulnerabilities that could have allowed attackers to take over the service and access customer data.
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