The Alphabet company offered up to US$23 billion for the New York-based startup. Wiz plans to pursue an initial public offering instead, CEO Assaf Rappaport wrote in an internal memo, saying he’s confident it will be more valuable as a public company. (Bloomberg)

Talking point: Google has been making inroads in the cloud services business, reporting a profit in the space for the first time last year. Acquiring Wiz—which scans data stored on the cloud for security risks—would have helped it catch up to leaders like Amazon and Microsoft. But a takeover that big (it would have been Google’s largest ever) would almost certainly attract intense antitrust scrutiny. Regulators are already challenging Google in other areas of its business. It’s facing lawsuits with the U.S. Justice Department over claims it has abused its dominance in search and digital advertising.