Cloud cybersec unicorn Wiz raises $300m. at $10b. valuation

Cloud security company Wiz has closed a $300 million Series D funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and existing investors Greenoaks Capital Partners and Index Ventures. To date, it has raised $900 million and following the round, the three-year-old company has become the world's largest cybersecurity unicorn and fastest SaaS company to achieve a $10 billion valuation.

Wiz will use the funds to accelerate the growth of its global operations, enable customer diversification across a range of industries and continue innovating within the cybersecurity space.

The round represents a hefty amount of capital, which is particularly noteworthy given the current global market turmoil and the regression of Israel’s economy from its recent all-time high in 2021.

Wiz co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport noted the company’s good fortune despite trying times. "We are extremely proud of our growth rate in terms of number of customers, sales and valuation, especially in view of the current market conditions for global hi-tech,” he said, noting that the company’s “explosive growth” is indicative of the value of its platform.

Last year Wiz expanded its cloud security platform by adding modules for Container and Kubernetes security, Data Security Posture Management and Cloud Detection and Response, enabling organizations to further consolidate their cloud security program to a single platform.

Your head is in the clouds (and so is the entire corporate infrastructure)

Cloud security is becoming an increasingly critical industry, as a growing number of companies migrate their workflow, operations and data to the cloud in order to leverage its efficiency.

According to management consulting company Gartner, over 95% of new digital workloads are estimated to be deployed on cloud-native platforms by 2025, a 65% increase from 2021.

Lightspeed Ventures partner Arsham Memarzadeh highlighted the growing importance of the cloud industry, stating that "the continued adoption of the cloud opens up the next platform opportunity in cyber.”

Last week, data company Techtonic highlighted the importance of cloud data’s physical security. The company announced that it will construct a 15,000-square-meter cloud data center in Beit Shemesh that will feature several infrastructural redundancies and be equipped with armor plating that will enable it to withstand direct impact from long-range missile strikes.

“The accelerated migration to the cloud has created vast demand for data centers, yet many organizations still have doubts about physical safety, especially when it comes to highly exposed above-ground data centers,” said CEO Gad Bennett. “In response, Techtonic’s data center will be a secure, fortified underground hosting facility and among the most advanced in the country.”