Exclusive Interview: Wiz's Co-Founder On AI, Security And Google
CTO Ami Luttwak dishes on how AI has changed cybersecurity and Wiz's product roadmap -- plus life since Wiz's announced $32 billion acquisition by Google.
The Upshot
As chief technology officer of one of the fastest-growing software startups ever, Ami Luttwak has spent a lot of time and effort ensuring Wiz’s user interface was just right.
But the Wiz co-founder now says he imagines a future, maybe a year or two from now, where that interface has been made largely irrelevant by AI.
“We invested a lot in making a very nice UI with a graph, a very nice graph. And maybe it’s not important anymore,” he tells Upstarts. “It’s great, but I’m trying to forget it… you either reinvent yourself, or you will be replaced.”
Obsolescence has not been a concern for Wiz in its five years of existence so far. By 2023, when I first met Luttwak in Tel Aviv for a Forbes cover story about Wiz, the company was already valued at $10 billion, with $200 million in revenue. This past March, with its annual recurring revenue now at $750 million, Wiz agreed to join Google as its largest acquisition ever, for $32 billion. (And a reported $3.2 billion if regulators block the deal.)
Cybersecurity remains hot. Just yesterday, Palo Alto Networks announced its intent to acquire CyberArk for $25 billion.
But to Luttwak, that deal is about AI: a new moment it’s unlocked in security. “Existing players are getting ready to seize the moment, and we can expect many more mergers and acquisitions to come," he says.
Then there are startups like Cursor, and more recently, vibe coder Lovable, which have bragged about reaching $100 million in ARR even faster than Wiz, the new-old benchmark to beat.
So it’s no surprise that Luttwak spends much of his time thinking about what Wiz will look like in the AI era. Semi-automated agent working alongside an engineer in their code editor? Fully-automated one behind the scenes? He, and Wiz, need to figure it out.
“Everything is moving at the speed of AI, and we have to move at that speed also,” Luttwak says in a sit-down interview in Wiz’s New York office in July. “A lot of companies depend on us. If I don’t give them a way to move fast with AI, how are they supposed to do it?”
In an extended interview with Upstarts, Wiz’s co-founder explains the company’s current approach to AI, and how it’s approached building since the Google announcement.
Those insights, and lessons for startup founders, are below.