The acquisition of $ 32 billion from Wiz by Google Parent Alphabet promises a colossal pay day for investors in the stadium of the cybersecurity startup.
The agreement is a big victory for Sequoia, one of the most famous VC companies, which should earn $ 3 billion, about 25 times the money it has invested in the company, Bloomberg reported. Despite substantial yields for limited SEVOIA partners, their percentage gains will be much lower than those of another Early WIZ: VC Cyberstarts, based in Israel.
Cyberstarts focused on cybersecurity invested $ 6.4 million compared to its first $ 54 million fund to Wiz seeds in February 2020.
Today, this fund holds 4.1% of WIZ, which means that it is about to gain $ 1.3 billion on the agreement, according to a person familiar with the performance of the company. Cyberstarts also sold $ 120 million in Wiz shares in secondary transactions, bringing the total return to the fund to $ 1.42 billion – a remarkable 222x return on the initial investment.
Cyberstarts also participated in the subsequent Wiz stadium rounds, investing a total of $ 40 million in its opportunity fund. These investments are now 128 million dollars, a more modest efficiency of 3.2x on invested capital, a person familiar with Cyberstarts told Techcrunch.
“Cyberstarts will have one of the best return funds in VC history,” said Shai Goldman, partner of Next Wave NYC, Written on x. “This investment was made on their inaugural fund, a good reminder that Fund 1 can be incredible to support as LP.”
Cyberstarts was not an ordinary emerging director of VC when he closed his inaugural fund in 2018. The firm was launched by Gili Raanan, who previously spent almost nine years as Sequoia general partner leading his Israeli investment strategy.
The small fund of $ 54 million has already obtained a 26x multiple on its limited partner capital. And that does not even have other potential outings, such as Island, a startup that would have raised capital in a $ 4.5 billion assessment.
Index Ventures, which has a 12% stake in Wiz, is about to earn more than $ 3.8 billion once the sale is finished, Reuters reported.
