What Wiz's $32 billion acquisition could mean for the tech industry

Google plans to acquire cybersecurity company Wiz for $32 billion in the search giant’s largest-ever acquisition.

Transcript

00:00As I've been talking to sources across venture capital, one question keeps coming up over and

00:04over again. Is big tech M&A back or is Wiz fundamentally a one-off? This week Google

00:10announced plans to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz for a whopping 32 billion dollars. Many have

00:17described Wiz as the fastest growing cybersecurity company in history. The company has long been a

00:22private markets juggernaut and is backed by some of the biggest names in venture capital from

00:26Sequoia to Index Ventures to Cyberstarts. Over the last few years tech exits have been pretty

00:32stalled. That's IPOs and M&A. On one hand you've had former FTC chair Lena Khan who was very likely

00:37to scrutinize the deals of big tech, a traditional acquirer of startups. And on the other hand you've

00:42had geopolitical and macroeconomic pressures creating a situation where IPOs almost dried up

00:47entirely. Folks pretty unanimously tell me that they do believe startup acquisitions are more

00:53likely to get done with the limited regulatory scrutiny of the Trump administration. On the other

00:57hand I still do think there is a situation where Wiz is fundamentally a one-off. Think about it

01:02this way, other cybersecurity companies look at Wiz and all of a sudden they have higher expectations

01:07than they ever would have had before about what an exit might look like whether that's an IPO

01:12or whether it's an acquisition. Buyers aren't willing to meet those expectations so what

01:16ultimately ends up happening is Wiz is then not a bellwether but an anomaly. The Wiz acquisition

01:22could turn out to be an inflection point for tech M&A moving forward but for now at least

01:26when it comes to what it means for the broader landscape there are more questions than answers.