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Cybersecurity startup Wiz said this week that it had raised $1 billion in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Thrive Capital.
The success of the Israeli-American company’s latest fundraising effort is a sign that an IPO is coming, but CEO and co-founder Assaf Rappaport said he’s not rushing it.
“Eventually, our goal is to become a public company,” he told Reuters Tuesday, adding that there’s “no pressure to go public and no need to raise more funds. So, we can time our IPO when we feel ready and when the markets are ready.”
That timing could be sooner rather than later as tech IPOs make a comeback. While 2024’s biggest IPO so far has been a luxury cruise line Viking, a number of tech startups have had successful debuts. That includes Reddit, Microsoft-backed Rubrik, consumer rebate platform Ibotta, and AI upstart Astera Labs. And Reddit reported earnings that beat Wall Street’s expectations on Tuesday, sending its stock price soaring 15%. Those successes could help transform what’s been dubbed a “mini tech IPO window” into a larger one.
Wiz’s $12 billion valuation is nearly twice that of Reddit at the time of its IPO, and more than double that of this year’s other big tech IPOs.
Wiz is a major purchaser of other tech startups and plans to keep up its appetite for acquisitions. The company in April acquired Gem Security and has plans to buy another cloud security startup Lacework.
Wiz says its customers include about 40% of Fortune 100 companies.
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