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Raaz Herzberg, CMO and VP of product strategy at Wiz.
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."
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Thousands of victims have sued Apple over its alleged failure to detect and report illegal child pornography, also known as child sex abuse materials (CSAM).
The proposed class action comes after Apple scrapped a controversial CSAM-scanning tool last fall that was supposed to significantly reduce CSAM spreading in its products. Apple defended its decision to kill the tool after dozens of digital rights groups raised concerns that the government could seek to use the functionality to illegally surveil Apple users for other reasons. Apple also was concerned that bad actors could use the functionality to exploit its users and sought to protect innocent users from false content flags.
Child sex abuse survivors suing have accused Apple of using the cybersecurity defense to ignore the tech giant's mandatory CSAM reporting duties. If they win over a jury, Apple could face more than $1.2 billion in penalties. And perhaps most notably for privacy advocates, Apple could also be forced to "identify, remove, and report CSAM on iCloud and implement policies, practices, and procedures to prevent continued dissemination of CSAM or child sex trafficking on Apple devices and services." That could mean a court order to implement the controversial tool or an alternative that meets industry standards for mass-detecting CSAM.
Apple is being sued over its decision not to implement a system that would have scanned iCloud photos for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The lawsuit argues that by not doing more to prevent the spread of this material, it’s forcing victims to relive their trauma, according to The New York Times. The suit describes […]
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Veeam Software, a cloud data startup that provides secure data backups on remote servers, has secured a $2 billion investment from a group of top-tier investors through a secondary offering. The funding, announced Tuesday, values the Swiss-based company at $15 […]
The lawsuit was filed by Amar Bhakta, an Apple employee, who claims the firm unlawfully restrains freedom of speech.
Andrew Harnik via Getty Images
A lawsuit says Apple invades the privacy of employees by monitoring personal devices.
The lawsuit also claims Apple's policies suppress employee rights and whistleblowing.
The suit was filed by an Apple worker who says it barred him from publicly discussing his work.
A lawsuit says Apple illegally limits the freedom of employees by monitoring personal devices and iCloud accounts and prohibiting them from talking about their pay and working conditions.
The complaint was filed on Monday in the California Superior Court in Santa Clara County by Amar Bhakta. The suit says Bhakta has worked for Apple in digital advertising tech and operations since 2020.
"Apple's surveillance policies and practices chill, and thus also unlawfully restrain, employee whistleblowing, competition, freedom of employee movement in the job market, and freedom of speech," the suit says.
It also claims the smartphone maker "actively discourages" using iCloud accounts only for work.
"If you use your personal account on an Apple-managed or Apple-owned iPhone, iPad or computer, any data stored on the device (including emails, photos, video, notes and more), are subject to search by Apple," the lawsuit quotes Apple company policy as saying.
The lawsuit says that Bhakta was barred from discussing his work in podcasts and was asked to delete information about his working conditions from his LinkedIn profile.
Bhakta filed the suit under the Private Attorneys General Act, which authorizes workers to sue on behalf of the State of California for labor violations.
He is being represented by Outten & Golden and Baker, Dolinko & Schwartz.
Outten & Golden is also representing two women suing Apple in a suit saying the company paid more than 12,000 female workers in California less than male colleagues with similar roles.
"All California employees have the right to speak about their wages and working conditions," Jahan Sagafi, a partner at Outten & Golden, said in a press release about Bhakta's case.
"Apple's broad speech suppression policies create a danger of discrimination going unchallenged far too long, which harms all Apple employees and Californians in general," he added.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
In a statement to Reuters, Apple said the suit's claims lacked merit, adding: "At Apple, we're focused on creating the best products and services in the world and we work to protect the inventions our teams create for customers."
Microsoft is facing a £1 billion lawsuit in the UK, accused of unfairly overcharging customers who use rival cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud. The case, filed by competition lawyer Maria Luisa Stasi, alleges […]
AWS recently laid out growth plans for 2025 in internal documents.
One of the initiatives is focused on working more with consulting firms.
Accenture was among several consulting firms mentioned by AWS.
Amazon Web Services wants to work more with consulting firms, including Accenture, part of a broader plan to spur growth in 2025, according to an internal planning document obtained by Business Insider.
AWS is looking to expand work with external partners that can sell its cloud services to hundreds of their existing customers. AWS sees an untapped market worth $250 billion and thousands of contracts up for renewal, the document explained.
Beyond Accenture, AWS mentioned Tata Consultancy, DXC Technology, and Atos as partners in the planning document.
AWS will prioritize these partners' existing customers and proactively reach out to them before contract-renewal time, and help the partners become "cloud-first," the document explained.
AWS pioneered cloud computing and still leads this huge and growing market. Over the years, the company has done a lot of work with customers through in-house cloud advisers. So the plan to expand its relationships with outside consulting firms is notable.
Ruba Borno is the VP leading the initiative, which will "review and prioritize partner's incumbent customers based on workloads and relationship," the document also stated.
Borno is a Cisco veteran who joined AWS a few years go to run its global channels and alliances operation, which works with more than 100,000 partners, including consulting firms and systems integrators and software vendors.
These plans are part of new AWS growth initiatives that include a focus on healthcare, business applications, generative AI, and the Middle East region, BI reported last week.
These are part of the AWS sales team's priorities for next year and Amazon refers to them internally as "AGIs," short for "AWS growth initiatives," one of the internal documents shows.
A spokesman for Tata Consultancy declined to comment. Spokespeople at Accenture did not respond to a request for comment.
Oracle shares are set for their best year since 1999 after a 75% surge.
The enterprise-computing stock has benefited from strong demand for cloud and AI infrastructure.
Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison's personal fortune has surged .
Oracle has surged 75% since January, putting the stock on track for its best year since a tripling in 1999 during the dot-com boom.
The enterprise-computing giant's share price has jumped from a low of about $60 in late 2022 to about $180, boosting Oracle's market value from below $165 billion to north of $500 billion.
It's now worth almost as much as Exxon Mobil ($518 billion), and more valuable than Mastercard ($489 billion), Costco ($431 billion), or Netflix ($379 billion).
Oracle's soaring stock price has boosted the net worth of Larry Ellison, who cofounded the company and is chief technology officer. His holding of more than 40% puts him second on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list worth $227 billion, second only to Tesla CEO Elon Musk's $330 billion.
Oracle provides all manner of software and hardware for businesses, but its cloud applications and infrastructure are fueling its growth as companies such as Tesla that are training large language models pay up for processing power.
The company was founded in 1977 but is still growing at a good clip. Net income jumped by 23% to $10.5 billion in the year ended May, fueled by 12% sales growth in the cloud services and license support division, which generated nearly 75% of its revenues.
Oracle signed the largest sales contracts in its history last year as it tapped into "enormous demand" for training LLMs, CEO Safra Catz said in the fourth-quarter earnings release. She said the client list included OpenAI and its flagship ChatGPT model, which kickstarted the AI boom.
Catz also predicted revenue growth would accelerate from 6% to double digits this financial year. That's partly because Oracle is working with Microsoft and Google to interconnect their respective clouds, which Ellison said would help to "turbocharge our cloud database growth."
Oracle has flown under the radar this year compared to Nvidia. The chipmaker's stock has tripled in the past year and it now rivals Apple as the world's most valuable company. Yet Oracle is still headed for its best annual stock performance in a quarter of a century — and its bosses are promising there's more to come.
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