According to Index Ventures Partner Shardul Shah, cybersecurity startup Wiz sits “at the center of three tailwinds: AI, cloud, and security spend.” Those tailwinds powered what just became the largest venture-backed acquisition in history — Google’s $32 billion deal, finalized after a declined 2024 offer, antitrust review on both sides of the Atlantic, and an extra $9 billion to sweeten the pot.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Anthony Ha, Rebecca Bellan, and Sean O’Kane sit down with Shah to dig into what made Wiz worth that price tag and more of the week’s headlines. From DOGE data concerns to Palmer Luckey’s retro gaming startup and Meta’s acquisition of viral AI agent social network Moltbook. Plus, the latest in the Anthropic vs. DoD saga as tech workers at OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft sign on to a legal brief in support of Anthropic.

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