According to the Finance News app, Wiz Inc., an important participant in the field of cybersecurity, recently made a major decision to reject a $23 billion acquisition offer from technology giant Google (GOOGL.US) and instead choose to move forward with its initial public offering (IPO) plan.

For Google, this rejection is undoubtedly a setback, as the company is trying to catch up with its main competitors, Microsoft (MSFT.US) and Amazon (AMZN.US), in the fiercely competitive cloud services market. Previously, Google acquired cybersecurity company Mandiant for $5.4 billion, which was its second-largest acquisition in history. By acquiring Wiz, Google could have further enriched and perfected its portfolio of security products. Wiz, a startup based in New York, provides data scanning services to identify and locate security risks by connecting with cloud storage providers such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

Assaf Rappaport, CEO of Wiz, expressed his emotions frankly in a memo to employees: "It's not easy to refuse such a tempting offer, but I believe that with the outstanding ability of our team, we have made the right choice." He emphasized that the company's next goal is to achieve $1 billion in annual recurring revenue and succeed in its IPO.

It is understood that two months ago, Wiz Inc. reached an important milestone in its development process: it successfully raised $1 billion and its valuation soared to $12 billion. This high-profile company not only absorbed $400 million in mergers and acquisitions to quickly expand its business in the United States, but also began planning its first public offering (IPO). However, at this time, Google threw an olive branch to Wiz.

However, for large technology companies like Google, acquiring large-scale targets like Wiz is not common, and such acquisitions often face strict scrutiny from antitrust regulators. In addition, the acquirer may also have to deal with litigation between Wiz and its competitor Orca Security. Google has faced multiple antitrust challenges, including the US Department of Justice's accusation of its dominant position in the search business and lawsuits against its digital advertising tools.

Today, Google has been working hard to enhance its cybersecurity capabilities, which is a key part of its strategy to compete for market share in the cloud computing market. Although Google still lags behind Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud computing market, the search engine giant has been making steady progress, and its cloud computing division achieved profitability for the first time last year.

In addition, the acquisition of Mandiant has enhanced Google's reputation in the cybersecurity industry. At a conference in Las Vegas this year, Google demonstrated how its Gemini AI model helps customers analyze threats and resolve potential security vulnerabilities.

Eric Doerr, vice president of cloud security engineering, sees artificial intelligence as a tool to help companies become more proactive in cybersecurity. He pointed out that AI can assist in research tasks that would otherwise require a lot of manpower.

It is worth mentioning that Assaf Rappaport, CEO of Wiz, and his team have a deep understanding of the cybersecurity industry. In 2015, Rappaport sold another cloud security company called Adallom, which they founded, to Microsoft for $320 million. In an interview, he pointed out that the integration of the cybersecurity industry is necessary because even small companies need to use dozens of security tools, and this market situation puts pressure on integrated network platforms to grow.

It is reported that Wiz's rapid rise is due to its early insight into cloud security as an area that has not been fully developed and has a large and growing customer base. Wiz claims that 40% of the Fortune 100 companies are its customers, with an annual recurring revenue of $350 million. Its investor lineup is impressive, including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Insight Partners, and Cyberstarts. In addition, billionaire Bernard Arnault and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz have also provided financial support for this startup.

Wiz's technology quickly checks everything on the client's cloud server, including malware, exposed company confidential and personal data, and insecure configurations that may lead to vulnerabilities, by remotely connecting to it. Neil MacDonald, vice president of Gartner, said that using these tools, the security department can quickly and comprehensively understand its network and vulnerabilities of different cloud providers.

Wiz competes in the two main markets of cloud workload protection platform and cloud security posture management in the cloud security field. The annual growth rate of these two businesses exceeds 25%, and it is expected that the market size will reach $520 million and $2.1 billion respectively this year. Its competitors include Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks Inc., Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. and CrowdStrike Holdings Inc.