Israeli cloud security giant Wiz announced its acquisition of Israeli cybersecurity company Dazz for an estimated $450 million. Wiz, considered one of Israel's most prominent and promising high-tech companies, declined a record $23 billion acquisition offer from Google six months ago. Dazz’s purchase marks another step in Wiz's independent path toward a public offering.
Dazz has developed an AI-based platform for identifying, prioritizing and swiftly resolving security vulnerabilities in organizational cloud environments. The platform consolidates millions of alerts from various vulnerability detection tools, focuses on critical vulnerabilities and provides engineers and developers with precise guidance for addressing them.
Dazz's platform is now expected to integrate into a new Wiz product that enables developers and security teams to fix vulnerabilities directly in source code.
This marks Wiz's third acquisition of an Israeli company in the past year. Last December, Wiz acquired startup Raftt, which developed a platform to enhance developer collaboration, for tens of millions of dollars. In April, it purchased Gem Security, which specializes in rapid detection and response to cloud-based attacks, for $350 million.
Dazz, which has experienced rapid growth over the past four years – boasting a 500% annual sales increase – was founded in 2021 by Merav Bahat (CEO), Tomer Schwartz (CTO) and Yuval Ofir (VP of R&D).
All three founders bring extensive experience in cybersecurity: Bahat is well-acquainted with Wiz's co-founder and CEO, Assaf Rappaport, from their time at Microsoft Israel R&D where Rappaport served as CEO and Bahat worked alongside him as deputy CEO, leading the business cloud security division.
Schwartz was among the first employees at Adallom, sold to Microsoft for $320 million and later co-founded Armis Security. Ofir previously served as VP of R&D at cybersecurity company Claroty. This past July, Dazz announced a $50 million funding round.
Since its founding, Wiz has raised $1.9 billion and reached over $500 million in annual recurring revenue, with about 45% of Fortune 100 companies among its clients. In July, Wiz surprised both the local and global tech industries by declining a $23 billion acquisition offer from Google to focus on a public offering.
Although the deal didn't materialize, the offer nearly doubled Wiz's valuation compared to its most recent funding round in May, which stood at $12 billion. According to Rappaport, the company aims to reach $1 billion in annual revenue and pursue an IPO that will be one of Wall Street's largest.
Following its acquisition of Dazz, Rappaport revealed that the two companies' teams have been collaborating for many years. "Wiz was founded to help organizations secure their entire cloud environment — not only to identify vulnerabilities but also to fix them as quickly and efficiently as possible. Dazz aligns perfectly with this vision."
Dazz CEO Merav Bahat added, "Dazz has grown rapidly thanks to groundbreaking technology and has succeeded in leading a revolution in vulnerability remediation. Now, we're thrilled about the next step in our journey and look forward to joining forces with Wiz on our shared mission – building the best cybersecurity company in the world."
Get the Ynetnews app on your smartphone: Google Play: https://bit.ly/4eJ37pE | Apple App Store: https://bit.ly/3ZL7iNv