Final regulatory approval of Google’s acquisition of Israeli cybersecurity company Wiz has been received after the The European Commission unconditionally approved the $32 billion deal, under the EU Merger Regulation.
This is a significant decision and the removal of the largest major obstacle for completion of the deal, but there are still a number of countries that have not formally approved the process, including Turkey, South Africa, Australia and Israel itself..
Now the four founders – Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, Yinon Costica, and Roy Reznik – can breathe a sigh of relief. Each of them will receive over $2 billion before taxes, and the Israel Tax Authority can anticipate revenues of at least NIS 9 billion from taxation of the founders, employees and some of the investors.
Antitrust proceedings have been the only obstacle separating shareholders from the billions. The deal received approval from the US antitrust authorities last November, and today the EU gave its blessing. The approval processes in Israel and other countries may extend into next month.
This is the largest-ever acquisition in Israel, and a deal that will make Israel a strategic development and sales center for cybersecurity products in Google’s cloud environment, GCP. Wiz will make Google a major cybersecurity player that can compete with Microsoft, which has also opened a global cybersecurity center in Israel, also courtesy of Rappaport who sold Adallom to Microsoft a decade ago.
EU approval has not been certain, with voices in Europe calling for the deal to be canceled or at least subject to an active antitrust investigation. Among the arguments raised are concerns about Google’s growing influence on the EU economy at the expense of local companies, the exposure of critical layers of data security to a large US company, and concern that the acquisition will make Wiz affiliated with Google, which would harm the service it provides to Microsoft and AWS customers.
However, it is believed that the EU is not interested in creating further friction with the Trump administration at the moment by blocking deals for US companies, and has decided not to make antitrust another disputed front in relations between the continents.
Who will benefit from the deal?
The biggest beneficiaries of the deal are, first and foremost, the four Israeli founders, who will each earn $2-2.5 billion before taxes. Together, they own almost a third of the company’s shares after having already sold a few percent of their holdings in a secondary round conducted before the signing of the Google deal. The group of founders led by Rappaport is also the largest source of tax revenue for the country, since most of the other major shareholders are not Israelis and will pay minimal tax.
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<p>Foreign venture capital funds will bring in the lion’s share of the proceeds from the deal: Index Fund will come out with about $3.5 billion, Sequoia with $3.2 billion, Insight Partners with $2.8 billion and Lightspeed with $1.2 billion. CyberStarts, the venture capital fund of Gili Raanan, a former Sequoia executive, is the only Israeli fund (except for the passive fund Cerca) that will generate significant revenue from the deal, after being the first investor in Waze – it will bring in $1.28 billion.The state will also benefit from the deal, although the decline in the shekel-dollar exchange rate over the past year has eroded expected revenues.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on February 10, 2026.
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