Google agreed to buy Wiz, a fast-growing cybersecurity start-up, for $32 billion in the company’s biggest push to strengthen its cloud-computing business and expand beyond the search engine and consumer internet services that made it a household name.
The all-cash deal, announced on Tuesday, would be Google’s largest, easily surpassing its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility in 2012.
With the deal, Google would get a five-year-old company that most consumers are unfamiliar with but that a growing number of businesses rely on to protect their cloud applications. The Silicon Valley giant worked for months last year to forge a deal for Wiz, which was most recently valued at $12 billion. In July, Wiz rejected Google’s $23 billion takeover offer, saying it wanted to pursue an initial public offering, which never came.
The splashy purchase, which the companies expect to close in 2026, would inject fresh momentum into Google Cloud, the division that sells computing services to other businesses. It would also be the tech giant’s most aggressive effort to keep up with rival Microsoft in cybersecurity.
In a conference call about the deal on Tuesday, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said the company was buying Wiz because it “is an innovative, leading cloud security platform..”
He added, “The pace and impact of breaches are accelerating. A.I. brings new risks, but also new opportunities” that Wiz could help with.
But first, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, would have to clear regulatory hurdles.
The deal will test the company’s ability to conduct major acquisitions during protracted antitrust battles with the U.S. government. The Justice Department has sued Google in two separate monopoly cases, one targeting its ubiquitous search engine and another seeking to break up its digital advertising-technology business. A federal judge ruled last year that the company had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search and will decide on remedies to restore competition by August.
Under President Trump, regulators have continued taking a stand against corporate consolidation. In January, the Justice Department sued to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s acquisition of a rival, Juniper Networks, arguing that the deal would eliminate competition and raise prices.
For Google, which has shied away from large acquisitions in recent years, Wiz proved to be worth the regulatory risk. Mr. Pichai highlighted the startup’s ability to drive growth, saying on the call that half the Fortune 100 companies use Wiz’s technology.
Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf, an analyst at eMarketer, a firm that compiles business data, said in an email that it was uncertain if Google would receive regulatory approval for the deal.
“Given its price tag — and the fact that Google’s already been found guilty of anticompetitive conduct in the search market — the acquisition will attract too much scrutiny to go through completely unimpeded,” she wrote.
The purchase fits into Alphabet’s yearslong strategy of trying to diversify from the search engine, YouTube video service and other online advertising businesses that bring in three-quarters of its revenue. Alphabet has created venture companies like the self-driving car company Waymo and Verily, which is focused on health care, but they have yet to fully pay off.
The company has pumped resources into Google Cloud. Like its competitors Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, the business offers services to help companies store and analyze data, as well as run applications.
The Wiz acquisition aligns with a plan to make Google Cloud a bigger player in cybersecurity. Under Thomas Kurian, the unit’s chief executive, Google Cloud bought two cybersecurity firms in 2022 — Mandiant for $5.4 billion and Siemplify for a reported $500 million. The strategy could help Google catch up to Microsoft, which has said it generates more than $20 billion in annual revenue from security, making it the world’s largest provider of cybersecurity software.
Google and Wiz resumed talks about a deal in August, after Wiz walked away from an offer the month before, two people with knowledge of the negotiations said. Wiz had begun another round of fund-raising when it agreed to Google’s offer, two people close to the company said.
Google has already suggested that the deal would not undermine competition in the cloud market. Mr. Kurian said on the conference call that if Wiz joined his division, it would continue working with other cloud providers including Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle. He added that with Wiz, Google will be able to give customers more visibility into their own systems and defend against new threats emerging with artificial intelligence.
If completed, the deal may help reinvigorate Google Cloud’s revenue expansion. As the business has grown, its pace has usually slowed, though revenue in the fourth quarter rose a stout 30 percent from a year earlier, to $12 billion.
Wiz has grown rapidly. Last year, it said it had $350 million in recurring revenue, up from $100 million two years earlier. The company, which is based in New York, has said it plans to reach $1 billion in recurring revenue this year.
The acquisition will “accelerate our rate of innovation faster than what we could achieve as a stand-alone company, thus enabling us to protect more organizations,” Assaf Rappaport, the chief executive of Wiz, said on the call.
Wiz’s investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Thrive Capital, Greenoaks and Advent International.
Lauren Hirsch contributed reporting from New York.
