In its Largest Acquisition, Alphabet will Pay $32 Billion to Acquire Wiz

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, said on March 18 that it will make its largest-ever acquisition of the rapidly expanding startup Wiz for approximately $32 billion. The company is focussing on cybersecurity to strengthen its position against Amazon.com and Microsoft in the cloud computing competition. Wiz will join Google's cloud division as a result of the historic agreement, bolstering the company's efforts to provide cybersecurity solutions that help businesses eliminate important risks. Given its high price and disproportionately large breakup fee, Alphabet is confident that the acquisition will be approved by the White House, despite the Trump administration's involvement in significant transactions and its pledge to closely monitor Big Tech. Alphabet's stock fell about 3%. Prior to T18 March, the stock had dropped 13% this year due to concerns about its high AI expenditures in comparison to the emergence of China's less expensive DeepSeek and a retreat by the IT behemoths that had dominated the market for the previous two years. Alphabet had to accept a higher price to finalise the deal than the $23 billion offer for Wiz last year, which the Israeli business had turned down.

Trump Made it Possible

The media source claims that despite Wiz's denial last year, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian persisted in his approach, and the two parties have been in touch. According to the story, which cited some inside sources, the negotiations accelerated in the two months following Donald Trump's return to the White House. Trump has stated that he will maintain the intense monitoring of Big Tech that he started during his first term, but Wall Street anticipates a change in antitrust laws under the president, whose choice of Andrew Ferguson to head the Federal Trade Commission may reduce regulations of large M&A. Among its clients are Morgan Stanley (MS.N), BMW (BMWG.DE), LVMH (LVMH.PA), and Google Cloud. Wiz collaborates with cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft's Azure, and Google Cloud. Other significant cloud services will still offer Wiz's products. In 2026, Alphabet anticipates the purchase to close, pending regulatory approval.

 Given Google's poor track record with its capital allocation plan, particularly with regard to M&A, investors will probably be closely monitoring the deal, according to Dave Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors. Google's cloud division has outperformed the company's search business in recent years, generating over $40 billion in sales in 2024. Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, stated that the increased price is predicated on Wiz seeing exponential growth for another year. Wiz has consented to one of the largest termination fees in M&A history, at over $3.2 billion.

Companies are Getting Attracted Towrds Cybersecurity Industry

Interest in the cybersecurity business has surged after last year's global CrowdStrike, outage roiled operations across industries, driving corporations to spend more on defending their web domains. The most recent agreement is yet another indication that Israel's cybersecurity sector is far more powerful than its peers. Silicon Valley giants have purchased a number of Israeli-based or Israeli-founded security firms, such as Own, which Salesforce purchased in 2024, and Siemplify, which Alphabet purchased in 2022. The founders of Wiz sold Adallom, a cloud security company, to Microsoft back in 2015.