Ella Barak
- Cloud security startup Wiz has grown rapidly in just four years, raising $1.9 billion along the way.
- The AI boom has accelerated cloud adoption, says Raaz Herzberg, the CMO of Wiz.
- Wiz rejected a $23 billion Google acquisition offer in July and said it plans to IPO instead.
In early 2020, Raaz Herzberg was a product manager at Microsoft Azure when she was offered a position at Wiz, a newly created cloud security startup. Since then, Wiz has turned down a $23 billion takeover offer from Google, expanded into Europe, and reached $500 million in annual recurring revenue.
Its next priority is to double that revenue metric — and then become a public company.
Wiz was launched by four cofounders who sold their previous business, Adallom, to Microsoft. It bills itself as a cloud security company that helps companies identify risks in their cloud providers.
"It felt like an opportunity I couldn't possibly pass on," Herzberg, now the chief marketing officer and vice president of product strategy at Wiz, told Business Insider in an interview from the company's new London office. "I started as head of product — but we started in the worst time. This was March 2020, when COVID-19 started," she said. "It's easy to remember because everything changed immediately."
It turned out that the pandemic was a boon for business. As more companies shifted to remote work, they increasingly relied on cloud services — expanding Wiz's client base. Four years since its launch, the scaleup has raised over $1.9 billion in funding from investing heavyweights such as Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, and Index Ventures.
It now sees huge opportunities to use the AI boom to cement its position in the market before it launches its initial public offering.
AI adoption has supercharged Wiz's business
Cloud computing offers crucial infrastructure underpinning AI applications. As more companies rush to adopt AI, security and privacy have taken center stage.
"The adoption of AI is very similar to what happened with the accelerated use of cloud," Herzberg said. Wiz has found that over 80% of its customers are using AI services — which "are, in some ways, like cloud services. Companies don't buy their machines or chips, so they're using these technologies on the cloud," she added.
"Part of the reason we're growing so fast is because we have access to the public cloud, which is growing incredibly fast — and AI only pushes that growth further," she said.
Because AI services are often used on public clouds — a service offered by third parties rather than an internal network — cloud security has become a critical issue.
Wiz's rapid growth has also been bolstered by its arsenal of acquisitions. This year, it scooped up security startups Rafft, Gem, and Dazz in a bid to bulk up its engineering talent and product suite.
"When we acquire companies, we don't sell their product. They rebuild it from scratch in the Wiz infrastructure," Herzberg told BI, noting that the company is still on the hunt for more acquisitions. "We believe in this concept of growing inorganically."
European expansion on the road to IPO
Wiz's global headquarters is in New York, with offices in Virginia, Texas, Colorado, and Israel. In August 2024, Wiz established its European headquarters in London. Its plush office is a short walk from Silicon Roundabout — London's scaled-down answer to Silicon Valley.
"The European market has been an ideal fit for our technology because it's more constrained by security, and more privacy aware than the US market," Herzberg told BI. "We estimate we will be able to get 35% of our revenue from Europe."
Wiz works with industry heavyweights on the continent, such as Revolut, Tide, and BMW. In 2024, it says it reached $500 million in ARR — but is aiming to reach $1 billion before it IPOs.
Operating independently is a big priority for the company. Earlier this year, Wiz turned down a $23 billion offer from Google, instead opting to prime itself for a public debut.
Herzberg declined to comment about the Google deal but added that Wiz had lofty ambitions to establish itself as a market leader in the cloud security domain.
"We are building a company that I believe can be the biggest cybersecurity company in the world," she said. "And I think at this point we are on that path."
She likened companies buying security services to buying insurance packages, pointing to incumbents in the security industry with a similar model.
"So if I look at the wing of, for example, network security firewalls, it has a clear leader — people today buy Palo Alto firewalls. They used to buy checkpoint firewalls. Now the leader is Palo Alto," she said. "Another example would be like the endpoint production server protection, that's a big domain on its own, and then it has a clear leader, like CrowdStrike."
As the public cloud domain balloons, Herzberg believed there needs to be a "leader in place to protect that domain" — adding that Wiz had a goal of taking that mantle.
Growth ambitions
A slate of elections this year has pushed the company to prepare for more government-mandated cybersecurity measures, especially in the US. In anticipation of Donald Trump's second term, Wiz has started building on a federal sales strategy.
Still, Herzberg said the scaleup is in "no rush" to go public. It's now looking for a chief finance officer, a requirement for companies that want to IPO.
"With the place we are at in terms of revenue and publicity and everything, it just brings us better candidates than we had as little as a year ago," Herzberg said. "I don't think we necessarily need someone with cloud security experience," she added. "We're hoping to announce that hire soon."
Elsewhere, it's gearing up to release two new products as it cements its presence in Europe with an impending hiring spree.
Still, the team hopes to come full circle to its New York roots by the time it's ready to IPO.
"Which one has the gong?" Herzberg laughed. "New York is where we'd list."
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/YPWg2A7
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