Google’s $32B Wiz Bet: A Trojan Horse for the Cloud Wars

Google just bet $32 billion on the future of cybersecurity, a bet that underscores a broader market shift to multi-cloud. It may also turn out to be Google's Trojan Horse in the cloud wars, where it has so far been running a distant third to market leaders AWS and Microsoft Azure. 

A Record-Breaking Deal for a Record-Breaking Company 

On March 19th, 2025, Google announced its plans to acquire Wiz, a rapidly growing cybersecurity firm founded in 2020, in an all-cash transaction valued at $32 billion. This deal marks Google’s largest-ever acquisition, surpassing its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility in 2012. It’s also the largest purchase of a pure-play cybersecurity firm, eclipsing Cisco’s $28 billion acquisition of Splunk in 2024, which I wrote about here.  

This comes after an earlier attempt in July 2024, when Google reportedly offered $23 billion for Wiz. While some speculated that antitrust concerns derailed those talks, it's more likely they stalled over valuation disagreements and Wiz leadership’s conviction in their ability to continue growing and potentially IPO. 

In early 2025, Google and Wiz reopened negotiations, with Google significantly sweetening its offer to $32 billion, a 39% increase from the prior offer made less than a year before. The deal also includes a staggering $3.2 billion breakup fee, described by Reuters as one of the largest in M&A history at more than 10% of the transaction value. This unusually high insurance policy suggests that while antitrust concerns may not have been the primary reason the earlier talks failed, they remain a consideration for Wiz, alongside valid concerns about market volatility and the risk of last-minute cold feet over moving forward with the acquisition. The breakup fee also signals just how crucial Google considers this acquisition to its future strategy. 

Wiz was founded by veterans of Unit 8200, the cyber intelligence division of the Israel Defense Forces, who had previously built and sold a different cloud security startup, Adallom, to Microsoft. It became the fastest private software company ever to reach $100 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), scaling from $1M in February 2021 to $100M by July 2022. That kind of growth was virtually unheard of before the generative AI boom reset the benchmarks for hypergrowth. 

What Does Wiz Actually Do? 

Wiz provides cloud security that works across all major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud). Unlike traditional security tools that require installing software agents on every server, Wiz takes an "agentless" approach, connecting directly to cloud environments to scan for vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and risky access permissions. 

Think of Wiz as a sophisticated security system that gives organizations a complete, real-time view of all their cloud resources and potential security risks in one dashboard. It helps security teams answer basic questions like "Who has access to our most sensitive data?" and "Which vulnerabilities pose the greatest real-world risk?" within minutes instead of days or weeks. 

Forbes reports that at the time of the acquisition announcement, Wiz's ARR was estimated at over $700 million, though the company was not profitable. The extraordinary valuation (a revenue multiple ranging between 45x-65x) reflects Google's strategic intent to dominate the rapidly evolving cloud security market. 

Today, Wiz serves more than half of the Fortune 100, as well as numerous government agencies and startups. Google Cloud's CEO Thomas Kurian framed the acquisition as part of a broader strategic shift in a Google Cloud Blog Post: "Google Cloud and Wiz share a vision to improve security by making it easier and faster for organizations of all types and sizes to protect themselves, end-to-end, across all major clouds."  

The acquisition also comes less than three years after Google paid over $5 billion for another premium brand in cybersecurity, Mandiant, in 2022. Despite its big spending in cybersecurity, Google is actually playing catch-up with Microsoft, which has quietly, more organically—and probably more cost-effectively—built an enterprise cybersecurity juggernaut with its Defender endpoint security suite and Azure Sentinel platform. 

A Trojan Horse Strategy for the Cloud Wars? 

This acquisition must be analyzed in the context of Google’s epic battle for cloud market share with AWS and Microsoft Azure. As of late 2024, Google held just 10% of the global cloud market share, trailing well behind AWS at 33% and Microsoft at 20%.  

While Wiz’s security capabilities are valuable in themselves, this acquisition represents a massive strategic bet that goes beyond merely adding security features to Google Cloud. It signals a fundamental shift in Google's competitive strategy against Microsoft and Amazon in the enterprise space. 

While Google Cloud has strong technical capabilities, it has struggled to penetrate large enterprises where Microsoft has developed deep relationships through Office and other productivity tools, and AWS has taken advantage of its first-mover advantage to consolidate its own market share. Security could be Google's "Trojan Horse" into a more solid foothold in these enterprises, allowing it to quietly enter the gates of AWS and Azure customers by securing their infrastructure, regardless of where it runs. 

Wiz's cloud-native security platform gives Google unprecedented visibility across multi-cloud environments, including AWS and Azure deployments. This positions Google not just as a provider, but potentially as the security control plane across the entire cloud ecosystem. Though Wiz will continue to operate as a separate entity post–acquisition, its ability to analyze cloud infrastructure and cloud deployments will generate valuable competitive intelligence for its parent company. And by adding Wiz into the fold, Google can now differentiate itself against its two largest foes by claiming supremacy in both security operations (via its Mandiant acquisition) and cloud security (via Wiz).  

Strategic Market Implications  

The $32 billion Google-Wiz deal represents one of the most significant strategic moves in enterprise technology in recent years. Beyond being Google's largest acquisition ever and the biggest cybersecurity deal in history, it reshapes the competitive landscape of cloud computing by giving Google a unique position as the security guardian across all major clouds. 

This massive deal reveals an undeniable truth: security is no longer separate from IT infrastructure; it must be woven directly into its fabric. At Worklyn Partners, we've been building on precisely this thesis since our beginnings. 

While tech giants integrate security and cloud services for enterprise clients with billion-dollar investments, Worklyn applies this same unified approach to the underserved SMB market. Through Harbor IT's cyber-first managed services and Quadrant's specialized security operations, we're managing cloud deployments and optimizing cloud spend while delivering enterprise-grade security to smaller organizations facing the same sophisticated threats but with far fewer resources. 

In the age of multi-cloud complexity and AI, security has become the strategic high ground worth fighting for. As this industry consolidation accelerates, Worklyn Partners stands positioned as the SMB market's answer to what Google and Microsoft are building for the enterprise, bringing integrated, security-first IT to the businesses that need it most.