According to insiders, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Google's parent company, is in the largest acquisition talks in its history, planning to acquire cybersecurity company Wiz for $23 billion. Most of the transaction will be paid in cash.

Wiz was founded by several entrepreneurs who previously co-founded cloud security company Adallom, which was sold to Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) for $320 million. The founders worked at Microsoft for several years before establishing Wiz.

According to Wiz's official website, the company generated approximately $350 million in revenue in 2023 and collaborates with 40% of Fortune 100 companies. Wiz employs around 900 people across the US, Europe, Asia, and Israel, with plans to hire an additional 400 employees globally in 2024.

In May this year, Wiz announced the completion of a private financing round, raising $1 billion and valuing the company at $12 billion. Wiz partners with several cloud service providers such as Microsoft, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Google, Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), and Alibaba (HKEX: 9988), with clients including renowned companies like Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and DocuSign (NASDAQ: DOCU).

In recent years, Google has invested heavily in cloud security. Two years ago, Google acquired cybersecurity company Mandiant (NASDAQ: MNDT) for $5.4 billion, marking its second-largest acquisition.

Under the Biden administration, the antitrust environment in the United States has become extremely stringent. In recent years, several major acquisition cases have been rejected by the courts, including deals between Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Arm, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI), as well as JetBlue (NASDAQ: JBLU) and Spirit Airlines (NYSE: SAVE).

Whether Alphabet's acquisition of Wiz will proceed smoothly remains to be seen, depending on the stance of US antitrust regulators.