Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Assaf Rappaport sought to reassure employees at his cyber security start-up Wiz last summer after walking away from a potential $23bn acquisition by Google’s parent company Alphabet.“We are going to go so big, we are going to make so much money in the future that you won’t regret it.” That was the message from the company’s chief executive during staff town halls at its offices in New York and Tel Aviv, according to a person familiar with his remarks.This week, Wiz reached a landmark deal to be acquired at a much higher price of $32bn. For insiders who know Rappaport, the record transaction is befitting for an entrepreneur whose good instincts have guided the company’s skyrocketing growth just five years since its founding.“Assaf always is right and even when he is wrong and it makes no sense for him to be right about something, he is right,” said an executive who has worked with him. “He declined an insane offer and was able to get an offer bigger by 30 per cent eight months later.”Wiz has emerged as a leader in the field of providing cyber security for the cloud, benefiting from companies moving their operations online while the proliferation of artificial intelligence has further driven demand for its offerings. The company generates about $700mn of annualised recurring revenue — a common metric used by software start-ups. It was on track for that figure to surpass $1bn this year, according to people familiar with the matter. Wiz declined to comment.The acquisition, announced on Tuesday, is Alphabet’s largest ever deal, but will pose a key antitrust test for the new Trump administration. While the deal marks a significant victory for Wiz’s backers, industry insiders said that the deal represented a hefty price that still faces regulatory hurdles. “Everyone in the industry is watching what they do with this one,” said Okta chief executive Todd McKinnon. “If it goes through, Google is going to have to justify $32bn for this company . . . It’s probably not justified on the financial metrics alone.”The company’s venture capital backers, which have been starved of significant exits in recent years, hope that the transaction will pass muster with regulators that have killed other recent large takeovers such as Adobe’s $20bn proposed deal for design software group Figma. Alphabet will pay Wiz a fee of more than $3.2bn if the deal gets blocked but some investors in the company are wary of prematurely celebrating a deal which must still clear a number of hurdles, including getting approval from a largely untested new regime at the US Federal Trade Commission. Wiz’s leaders made the decision to reject Alphabet’s offer in a late night discussion at the office last summer. Rappaport decided the best way for the company to become the global leader was as a standalone enterprise.“It’s not the type of offer anybody takes lightly,” one person familiar with the deliberations said.But Alphabet kept up its relationship with the company and revived its approach within the past fortnight. The companies were in serious deal talks even as hundreds of Wiz staffers celebrated in Tel Aviv earlier this month at the start-up’s party marking the Jewish holiday Purim.The second approach by Alphabet, both significantly higher and in a changed US regulatory environment, helped reassure Wiz that it would be able to become a global leader inside Google and continue to work with other cloud platforms.“If you pick a home for Wiz, there is nothing better than Google to be that home,” said Gili Raanan, Wiz’s board chair and a key early investor through his Cyberstarts fund. “Wiz decided to go that [Google] route with many, many alternatives. We felt that was the right thing for us. You can’t live life twice.” Rappaport is known for wearing golden goose sneakers, designer hoodies, and affection for his pet Mika, dubbed the company’s “chief dog officer”, who died last year. Wiz is one of several Israeli-founded start-ups to emerge from the country’s elite cyber intelligence unit 8200. Other global leaders such as Palo Alto Networks and Check Point were also founded by veterans of 8200. Rappaport, and the company’s three other co-founders Yinon Costica, Ami Luttwak and Roy Reznik all served in the unit where they met as teenagers.After he completed his service, he spent a couple years working as a consultant at McKinsey, before Rappaport and his friends founded the cloud security company Adallom in 2012.After selling Adallom to Microsoft for $320mn in 2015, he took roles overseeing the tech giant’s cloud security and Israel research operations. While at Microsoft, Rappaport made headlines in Israel for hiring support staff including cleaners and security guards as direct employees rather than contractors.When Rappaport founded Wiz in 2020, the initial plan for the company was to focus on network security. The group was then called Beyond Networks, but within just weeks the team changed course. Early on, he spoke with more than a dozen corporate chief information security officers each day as the company developed.“He and his co-founders learned about the real problems of customers and understood that operationalising cloud security was a major pain point,” said Shardul Shah, a partner at Index Ventures, Wiz’s largest shareholder with a 12 per cent stake. “What might take other companies months or even years to appreciate, they resolved in weeks.”Rappaport and his three co-founders each own about 10 per cent of Wiz, while alongside Index other major shareholders including Insight Partners and Sequoia Capital. Wiz employees, including office cleaners, also have shares in the company.Investors and colleagues say that the company’s rapid growth is a reflection of Rappaport’s quick decision making.In one example from the company’s early days, Wiz focused on working with the cloud platforms owned by Amazon and Microsoft. However, another major potential customer was a Google cloud customer. Rather than give up on the deal, Wiz moved to build out capability for Google too. It was a prescient move.“Across every part of the organisation, he’s able to get lots of stuff done quickly,” said Neil Mehta, co-founder and managing partner of Greenoaks, which had a 6 per cent stake in Wiz. “It’s almost Assaf speed, Assaf velocity, Assaf ambition and Assaf execution.”Additional reporting by Arash Massoudi in London, Rafe Uddin and Stephen Morris in San Francisco
