Before we partnered with Wiz in February 2020, our history with Assaf Rappaport and his co-founders Yinon Costica, Roy Reznik and Ami Luttwak already went back almost a decade.

We learned in 2013 that a team of alumni from Israel’s elite 8200 cybersecurity unit were starting a company together. We look for outliers at Sequoia—a founder coming out of 8200 was noteworthy, but a whole team was very special. They weren’t looking for financing. But after our Tel Aviv-based partner Gili Raanan secured a meeting, we convinced them to partner with Sequoia and we led the first financing for Adallom. (I later learned that Assaf thought I was Don Valentine when we first met, which may be why he agreed to the meeting.) 

After selling Adallom to Microsoft and leading Microsoft’s Cloud Security Group for five years, the co-founders left to once again start something new. We were thrilled to hear they wanted Sequoia and Gili (who by then had his own firm, Cyberstarts) to be their first partners. 

They didn’t know exactly what the something new would be, but they now had a proven track record and the ambition to build an enduring company. Before they even had a product, we led their initial financing round alongside Cyberstarts in early 2020 and I joined the board.

The team quickly hit on the insight that cloud security needed a simpler, agentless architecture for an increasingly complex digital world. Once the vision for Wiz became clear, they accelerated like no company I’ve ever seen: My partner Bogomil Balkansky, who also works with Wiz, says that in the early days the team strategically leveraged their Israeli time zone, working 9-5 on the product and then working late into the night on sales calls to the U.S. and Europe. 

As we helped recruit team members, we were consistently impressed with the caliber of talent joining Wiz and their ability to move quickly. Wiz set a record, reaching $100 million in annual recurring revenue in just 18 months, faster than any software company in history, and quickly became a leader in cloud security. 

Today’s milestone marks the start of an exciting new chapter. Wiz and Google Cloud share a vision to improve security by making it easier and faster for organizations of all types and sizes to protect themselves, end-to-end, across all major clouds. This will help spur the adoption of multicloud cybersecurity.

The future is bright for Wiz inside of Google Cloud. Just as we believed Google would change the world when we first partnered with the company in 1999, we believe Wiz is transforming cloud security.

At Sequoia, we partner with founders who want to make a dent in the universe. We couldn’t be prouder of Assaf and the team in reaching this milestone. It’s been an honor to be your partner for over a decade. Thank you for letting us be a part of your journey.