Wiz co-founder and vice president of research and development Roy Resnick told CNBC last week that the company has reached $500 million in annual recurring revenue and plans to double that to $1 billion in 2025. he said. He also reiterated that a $1 billion IPO was a prerequisite for Wizz's IPO, which he promised employees last summer when Wiz pulled out of talks to acquire Google for $23 billion.
TechCrunch reported at the time that the cloud security startup's ARR was about $350 million in May, but by the time it exited Google in July, it was already at about $500 million. In an email to employees after deal negotiations concluded, Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport told Wiz's 1,200 employees that the company hopes to achieve $1 billion in ARR by its IPO. At the time, Wiz executives expected to reach this number in 2025. So Reznik doubling last week is a good sign that Wiz is still growing as expected. A spokesperson also confirmed this ARR goal to TechCrunch.
Wiz had already experienced rapid growth virtually since its inception. In 2022, Wiz claimed to be the fastest startup in history to reach $100 million in ARR, achieving that goal just 18 months after launching in 2020.
Google's offer also came just when Wiz was in the perfect position to turn it down. The company just raised $1 billion a few months ago in May at a $12 billion valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Thrive Capital. At the time, Wiz called himself the world's largest cyber unicorn.
“We've already broken some records as a private company, and we believe we can break some more as an independent public company,” Reznik told CNBC last week. office. Resnick spoke about the growth rate of cloud computing and how global spending on cloud security has already exceeded $30 billion this year. What he meant was that Wiz still had a lot of room to grow.
If Wiz achieves the $1 billion ARR figure before attempting an IPO, and its underlying financials are strong and show potential for further growth, it could indeed make a record-breaking public offering. There is a gender. Back in 2020, Snowflake broke IPO records as the largest software IPO in history, with the stock ending the day with a market cap of $70 billion. It had a booming revenue of $265 million and a net loss of $348 million. Snowflake investors haven't maintained their enthusiasm, but the company still trades with a market capitalization of about $39 billion.
In other words, Wiz still has reason to believe that he might actually sneeze at a $23 billion offer in 2024.