Wiz, a cloud security startup launched by Microsoft veterans, has emerged from stealth mode and raised $100 million in Series A financing from Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners and Cyberstarts.
The Wiz platform is designed to "provide unmatched visibility and risk insights to allow security professionals to focus on things that matter most," the company asserts. The product's architecture can "scan an entire cloud environment across all compute types and cloud services for vulnerabilities, configuration, network, and identity issues without agents or sidecars," the funding announcement claims.
The financing surfaces just nine months after the Wiz founding team wrote its first line of code. The founding team includes the former leads of Microsoft's Cloud Security Group and the founding team of Adallom, a cloud access security brokerage (CASE) that Microsoft acquired for $320 million in 2015.
The founding Wiz team members -- Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, Yinon Costica and Roy Reznik -- have worked together for more than 15 years.
The company has yet to disclose whether it plans to work with managed security services providers (MSSPs), MSPs and/or channel partners.
Wiz Funding and Focus: Executive and Investor Statements
In a prepared statement about the funding and business focus, Wiz CEO and Co-Founder Assaf Rappaport said:
"When our founding team was leading the Microsoft Cloud Security Group, we saw firsthand how security teams struggled with the complexity of existing approaches to securing the cloud. We knew that by embracing a cloud-native approach, we could make a product that is simple to deploy and scale, allowing security teams to focus on real risks. We're excited to partner with such an experienced and well-respected team of investors again as we look to accelerate our growth in 2021, and meet the market demand for an elegant cloud security platform that works."
Added Shardul Shah, partner at Index Ventures:
"The Wiz founding team is among the most customer-obsessed groups of founders I've worked with and it shows in the product they've brought to market. 2020 has accelerated cloud adoption, and security teams have to coordinate with the rest of the business in a new digitally transformed reality. Wiz is the solution that these organizations need to not only secure the investments they've made, but to get security teams out in front where they can enable engineering and lines of business to innovate even faster."
Noted Doug Leone, global managing partner at Sequoia Capital:
"When we first met the Wiz founding team in 2012 during the early days of Adallom, it was clear they were a passionate group with a deep understanding of the security space ," said Doug Leone, global managing partner at Sequoia Capital. "Eight years later, the team has only gotten stronger with the founding of Wiz. Their past experiences executing at scale and their hunger to build an enduring company will help Wiz lead the market with a new generation of cloud security tools. We're thrilled to partner again with this exceptional founding team."
Concluded Jeff Horing, managing partner, Insight Partners:
"We're excited to work with Wiz because the team not only understands how to build great products but they also know how to build a successful team and company. Customer feedback has unanimously highlighted the benefit Wiz's powerful data mining and audit software brings the global business ecosystem, and after only nine months they're already in a place to redefine the Cloud Security market."
