Wiz Appoints New CFO for Journey to IPO

Cybersecurity startup Wiz has appointed a new CFO and president in a step toward a potential IPO. Fazal Merchant, an executive with a hefty background in corporate finance, mergers, and investments, has emerged from retirement to take the post.

Merchant told Reuters he hopes to take Wiz to IPO, perhaps within a year. "We have a lot of wind in our sails," he said.

Merchant’s background indicates he has the skills. Merchant was CFO when DirecTV Latin America was sold to AT&T for over $67 billion in 2015 and when DreamWorks Animation was sold to Comcast in 2016 for $3.8 billion.

Subsequently, Merchant became co-CEO of Tanium, a cybersecurity platform featuring endpoint protection, and he served on its board until his retirement in 2022. He has current board memberships with Warner Bros. Discovery, Ariel Investments, and Ryman Hospitality Partners and acts as a senior advisor to investment firm Sixth Street.

Source: Wiz

Wiz Shows Momentum

Merchant’s appointment speaks to Wiz’s momentum in the cybersecurity market. Founded in 2020, the company has raised $1.9 billion in funding, including a $1 billion tranche in May 2024 led by Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Thrive Capital. That round valued Wiz at $12 billion. According to Reuters, the company has a run rate of about $500 million and is aiming to hit $1 billion.

Wiz’s foundational product is a cloud native application protection platform (CNAPP), which incorporates security from code development through runtime. The platformization concept, which aims to eliminate multiple security point products, appears to have worked in Wiz’s favor: Customers include Chipotle, Colgate, Fox, Priceline, Salesforce, Siemens, and Snowflake, to name a few.

Wiz has also been acquisitive, buying cybersecurity companies Gem Security and Dazz this year. Both firms were acquired to bolster the platform approach. In a blog regarding the Gem Security buy, Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport stated:

“It is the year of security consolidation, and that is our path forward. Tool sprawl, silos, and visibility gaps have spurred organizations to actively push to consolidate vendors. To own the market, Wiz must solve this pain, while continuing to stretch the boundaries of innovation and make the complex simple — at speed.”

Bumps Along the Way

There have been bumps along the way to Wiz’s success. In July 2024, a potential acquisition by Alphabet for roughly $23 billion fell apart, reportedly due to Wiz’s concerns about details of the deal. At the time, CEO Rappaport revealed his alternative ambition to take the company public.

In 2023, Wiz was sued by Orca Security, which claimed Wiz copied its technology after a presentation to Microsoft in 2019 led to the 2020 founding of Wiz by former Microsoft employees. The complaint is set to go to trial in December 2025, according to the publication Calcalist.

Of course, patent fights in tech are nothing new, and according to Wiz, Orca’s claims are “baseless.”

Wiz also drew attention when successful Israeli VC Gili Raanan was questioned by Calcalist about the alleged use of loyalty rewards to potential customers of startups funded by his firm, Cyberstarts. Wiz, which was backed by Cyberstarts, came into the discussion, which has since died down as Raanan has discontinued the questionable practice.

Futuriom Take: Wiz’s appointment of Fazal Merchant marks a milestone in the company’s forward progress, which is driven by its focus on a platform approach to cybersecurity.