Assaf Rappaport, Wiz, on Centre Stage during day one of Web Summit 2021 at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.
Harry Murphy | Sportsfile | Getty Images
Google’s acquisition of cybersecurity startup Wiz could be a turning point for an uncertain IPO market and a mergers and acquisitions environment aching from a slowdown in deal activity.
Alphabet announced Tuesday that it plans to buy the Israeli cybersecurity startup for $32 billion in its biggest acquisition ever. The deal came months after an initial $23 billion offer fell through and Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport touted plans for an initial public offering.
While deal activity has slowed from its 2021 heyday, appetite has begun to pick up.
SailPoint went public in February and CoreWeave, which sells Nvidia’s AI processors, said in a Thursday filing that it plans to raise up to $2.7 billion in its IPO that’s expected this week. Ticket vendor StubHub filed for an IPO Friday.
Wiz’s blockbuster deal could signal the opening of the floodgates for the IPO and M&A markets.
Cybersecurity companies look particularly poised to win as companies hunt for ways to shield their highly profitable business models. CB Insights on Tuesday said cybersecurity solutions are one of the top acquisition target areas for 2025.
“Having a more complete offering for securing workloads in the cloud — that’s the core, the rationale behind [the Wiz] deal,” said Merritt Maxim, Forrester vice president and research director.
AI driving demand for more cybersecurity
The proliferation of artificial intelligence and the transition to the cloud has amplified the need for cybersecurity solutions.
More adept hacking schemes have accelerated since OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, expediting the need for cutting-edge solutions to fend off attackers. That’s made cybersecurity a key target area for companies looking to protect their business models, said Neil Barlow, partner at the law firm Clifford Chance.
“Hacks and phishing could effectively cause a business to crash,” said Barlow, who focuses on private equity M&A. “This is a business that is fundamental to operating, so cybersecurity has been a resilient area for quite some time.”
While megacap technology giant’s haven’t shied away from cybersecurity investments, AI tailwinds have forced companies to beef up their offerings. Google’s Wiz acquisition could force rival Amazon to make its own acquisition, Maxim said. Potential targets include startups Aqua Security, Orca Security and Sysdig.
“The Google-Wiz tie-up does give them some capabilities that make them stronger than AWS in some areas,” Maxim said. “AWS could target acquisitions to potentially bring their solution closer to Google.”
What’s next for the IPO market
Wiz’s mammoth buyout may dampen near-term sentiment for cybersecurity startups with IPO aspirations, but experts told CNBC they anticipate a pickup in the second half of the year.
One of those contenders is malware and phishing software maker Proofpoint, which told CNBC in October that it was exploring an IPO in the next 12 to 18 months. The company went private in 2021 in a $12.3 billion acquisition by private equity firm Thoma Bravo.
Forrester’s Maxim said Proofpoint and Illumio are companies ripe for IPOs in the coming months. Illumio, which offers data center and cloud security, was a member of CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list in 2017 and 2018.
Netskope, which also offers cloud security, is another company being closely watched for an IPO, said Brianne Lynch, head of market insight at EquityZen. Netskope told The Wall Street Journal last year that it was planning an IPO in the second half of 2025. The company may start to feel pressure from early investors hunting for liquidity 13 years after its founding, Lynch said.
Snyk, a cybersecurity startup founded about a decade ago, has also alluded to a public offering next year. The company was last valued at $7.4 billion and CEO Peter McKay said in a post last year that Snyk had crossed $300 million in annual recurring revenues.
The big question is whether now is the rip-the-band-aid off moment for companies that decide to IPO or whether market volatility will cause companies to once again kick the can down the road, Lynch said.
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., during a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, May 21, 2025.
Jim Lo Scalzo | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tesla shares have dropped 7% from Friday’s closing price of $323.63to the $300.71 close on Tuesday ahead of the company’s second-quarter deliveries report.
Wall Street analysts are expecting Tesla to report deliveries of around 387,000 — a 13% decline compared to deliveries of nearly 444,000 a year ago, according to a consensus compiled by FactSet. Prediction market Kalshi told CNBC on Tuesday that its traders forecast deliveries of around 364,000.
Shares in the electric vehicle maker had been rising after Tesla started a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in late June and CEO Elon Musk boasted of its first “driverless delivery” of a car to a customer there.
The stock price took a turn after Musk on Saturday reignited a feud with President Donald Trump over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the massive spending bill that the commander-in-chief endorsed. The bill is now heading for a final vote in the House.
That legislation would benefit higher-income households in the U.S. while slashing spending on programs such as Medicaid and food assistance.
Musk did not object to cuts to those specific programs. However, Musk on X said the bill would worsen the U.S. deficit and raise the debt ceiling. The bill includes tax cuts that would add around $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.
The Tesla CEO has also criticized aspects of the bill that would cut hundreds of billions of dollars in support for renewable energy development in the U.S. and phase out tax credits for electric vehicles.
Such changes could hurt Tesla as they are expected to lower EV sales by roughly 100,000 vehicles per year by 2035, according to think tank Energy Innovation.
The bill is also expected to reduce renewable energy development by more than 350 cumulative gigawatts in that same time period, according to Energy Innovation. That could pressure Tesla’s Energy division, which sells solar and battery energy storage systems to utilities and other clean energy project developers.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that Musk was, “upset that he’s losing his EV mandate,” but that the tech CEO could “lose a lot more than that.” Trump was alluding to the subsidies, incentives and contracts that Musk’s many businesses have relied on.
SpaceX has received over $22 billion from work with the federal government since 2008, according to FedScout, which does federal spending and government contract research. That includes contracts from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and Space Force, among others.
Tesla has reported $11.8 billion in sales of “automotive regulatory credits,” or environmental credits, since 2015, according to an evaluation of the EV maker’s financial filings by Geoff Orazem, CEO of FedScout.
These incentives are largely derived from federal and state regulations in the U.S. that require automakers to sell some number of low-emission vehicles or buy credits from companies like Tesla, which often have an excess.
Regulatory credit sales go straight to Tesla’s bottom line. Credit revenue amounted to approximately 60% of Tesla’s net income in the second quarter of 2024.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos leaves Aman Venice hotel, on the second day of the wedding festivities of Bezos and journalist Lauren Sanchez, in Venice, Italy, June 27, 2025.
Yara Nardi | Reuters
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos unloaded more than 3.3 million shares of his company in a sale valued at roughly $736.7 million, according to a financial filing on Tuesday.
The stock sale is part of a previously arranged trading plan adopted by Bezos in March. Under that arrangement, Bezos plans to sell up to 25 million shares of Amazon over a period ending May 29, 2026.
Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021 but remains chairman, has been selling stock in the company at a regular clip in recent years, though he’s still the largest individual shareholder. He adopted a similar trading plan in February 2024 to sell up to 50 million shares of Amazon stock through late January of this year.
Bezos previously said he’d sell about $1 billion in Amazon stock each year to fund his space exploration company, Blue Origin. He’s also donated shares to Day 1 Academies, his nonprofit that’s building a chain of Montessori-inspired preschools across several states.
The most recent stock sale comes after Bezos and Lauren Sanchez tied the knot last week in a lavish wedding in Venice. The star-studded celebration, which took place over three days and sparked protests from some local residents, was estimated to cost around $50 million.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.
Camille Cohen | AFP | Getty Images
The Google Doodle is Alphabet’s most valuable piece of real estate, and on Tuesday, the company used that space to promote “AI Mode,” its latest AI search product.
Google’s Chrome browser landing pages and Google’s home page featured an animated image that, when clicked, leads users to AI Mode, the company’s latest search product. The doodle image also includes a share button.
The promotion of AI Mode on the Google Doodle comes as the tech company makes efforts to expose more users to its latest AI features amid pressure from artificial intelligence startups. That includes OpenAI which makes ChatGPT, Anthropic which makes Claude and Perplexity AI, which bills itself as an “AI-powered answer engine.”
Google’s “Doodle” Tuesday directed users to its search chatbot-like experience “AI Mode”
AI Mode is Google’s chatbot-like experience for complex user questions. The company began displaying AI Mode alongside its search results page in March.
“Search whatever’s on your mind and get AI-powered responses,” the product description reads when clicked from the home page.
AI Mode is powered by Google’s flagship AI model Gemini, and the tool has rolled out to more U.S. users since its launch. Users can ask AI Mode questions using text, voice or images. Google says AI Mode makes it easier to find answers to complex questions that might have previously required multiple searches.
In May, Google tested the AI Mode feature directly beneath the Google search bar, replacing the “I’m Feeling Lucky” widget — a place where Google rarely makes changes.