| You're receiving Dealmaker for free. Upgrade to a paid subscription to access all of our award-winning tech and business journalism. Subscribe to The Information here for 25% off your first year (normally $399). Welcome back! Five-year-old Wiz, a $16 billion–valuation startup that sells cloud cybersecurity software to large companies, has always had a flair for the dramatic. A few years ago, CEO Assaf Rappaport declared it the fastest-growing software company ever. In 2023, it openly mulled a takeover of larger, publicly held SentinelOne. And last year Wiz told its employees it was turning down a $23 billion acquisition offer from Alphabet—a rich offer to reject. So maybe that's why Wiz's appointment Thursday of a chief financial officer with an unusual Hollywood-focused background feels fitting for one of the most closely watched private tech firms. Tel Aviv–based Wiz plucked Fazal Merchant out of a snowboarding-filled, Utah-based retirement, after a monthslong effort to find the right person for the job. Merchant, who has worked in various finance roles at investment banks, DirecTV and once-hot cybersecurity startup Tanium, also was CFO at Jeffrey Katzenberg's DreamWorks. In a phone interview Wednesday, Merchant, who is 51, acknowledged his unusual path. "If you look at my background, some would describe peculiar experiences. Maybe I'm struggling with professional ADD, I'm not sure," he said, adding that he had been "living his best life" in retirement and wasn't looking for a new gig when he connected with Wiz last year. He said he was drawn to the company's potential and will spend significant time at its U.S. outpost in New York. A big part of his job will be helping Wiz prepare for an initial public offering within the next year or so—a duty he's never taken on before. "This team's already broken records and milestones and [had] blinding growth," he said. Wiz also has been more blindingly candid about its IPO ambitions than most startups. Executives have said the company hopes to hit about $1 billion in annual recurring revenue before going public within the next year or so. Merchant said the number was "ambitious" but the company had "good visibility to [it]." That target implies high growth, given that I've heard Wiz expects to finish this fiscal year, which ends this month, with more than $600 million in ARR. Another potential issue for IPO investors: The company still burns cash, although it's unclear exactly how much. (A Wiz spokesperson declined to comment.) On the positive side: Investors tend to like how many big company clients Wiz has managed to snag (45% of the Fortune 100, its website declares), and how much customers have continued to spend. Still, Merchant's hiring is an important puzzle piece in the late-2025 and 2026 venture-backed IPO slate. By my count, Wiz was one of the last major venture capital–backed IPO contenders without a CFO, after software firm Canva and artificial intelligence infrastructure startup Vast Data made their own appointments in recent months. Navan and CoreWeave, both of which are expected to go public this year, made their CFO hires last year, too. Having a CFO is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a company to go public. Wiz will need to be sure it can confidently forecast to investors how fast it will grow each quarter, which is "challenging at this scale and this stage of growth," Merchant said. "I have a fair bit of work to do in terms of operations side—systems, governance, processes, controls," Merchant added. "None of that is rocket science." An IPO, of course, is in part about storytelling, not just hard, cold numbers. Cybersecurity companies in particular care deeply about perception. Wiz has been more than capable of weaving a tale to private investors and the press for why it will be an important company. Soon it will have to tell that story to a bigger crowd. | 
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