BRUSSELS / TEL AVIV — On February 10, 2026, the European Commission handed Alphabet’s Google an unconditional antitrust approval for its $32 billion acquisition of Israeli cloud-security giant Wiz, the largest acquisition in Israeli history and Google’s most expensive purchase to date. While EU regulators concluded the deal poses no threat to cloud-market competition, the approval effectively places a Brussels stamp on a transaction that critics argue deepens the global technology industry’s entanglement with a military-occupation apparatus built on the surveillance of Palestinians.

The decision removes the final major regulatory hurdle for a cash deal that will channel an estimated $3 billion in pretax proceeds to each of Wiz’s four founders, Assaf Rappaport, Yinon Costica, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik, and deliver a projected NIS 12 billion ($3.1 billion) windfall to the Israel Tax Authority. Yet beyond the balance sheets and tax receipts, the acquisition consolidates a commercialisation pipeline that human rights investigators and technology scholars describe as “The Palestine Laboratory”, the decades-old practice of testing surveillance and control systems on occupied populations before packaging them as “battle-tested” exports for global markets.

The Regulatory Green Light

‘No Competition Concerns’ – But at What Cost?

European Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera confirmed that Google’s cloud-market position, trailing Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, meant the transaction would not create market dominance or reduce consumer choice. The European Commission further ruled that any customer data Google acquires through Wiz would not constitute commercially sensitive intelligence and that rival cybersecurity firms could still conduct independent assessments.

But the regulatory assessment conspicuously avoided addressing a parallel set of concerns raised during the review period: the provenance of Wiz’s founding expertise, the military-intelligence pedigree of its workforce, and the implications of placing global cloud infrastructure under the stewardship of technologists forged in Israel’s Unit 8200, the signals intelligence corps responsible for what former operatives describe as a “digital dragnet” over Palestinian society.

Approvals remain pending in Turkey, South Africa, Australia, and Israel itself, but sources close to the transaction expect final closure by mid-March 2026. The EU’s clearance, observers note, arrives as Brussels seeks to avoid transatlantic trade friction with the incoming Trump administration, a calculus that may have outweighed calls from civil society groups to scrutinise the deal’s human rights dimensions.

The Founders, From Unit 8200 To Silicon Valley:

Four Captains, One Origin Story

Wiz’s four founders met as conscripts in the Israel Defence Forces and served together for nearly a decade. Rappaport, 42, is a graduate of the Talpiot program, an elite IDF track combining advanced physics, mathematics, and computer science, and subsequently served in Unit 81 and Unit 8200. Costica, Luttwak, and Reznik followed parallel trajectories through the military’s cyber-intelligence apparatus.

Their first venture, Adallom, was acquired by Microsoft in 2015 for $320 million. Rappaport went on to lead Microsoft’s Israel R&D centre, overseeing 1,500 employees before departing in 2020 to found Wiz. By 2023, Wiz served over 40% of Fortune 100 companies. By 2025, its valuation had reached $12 billion in private funding. Today, its acquisition price, 65 times annual revenue, has astonished even seasoned technology financiers.

Unit 8200’s influence on the global technology sector is difficult to overstate. A 2022 investigation identified at least 99 former Unit 8200 personnel employed at Google alone, spanning research, strategy, and operations roles. Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and TikTok have all recruited heavily from the unit’s veteran pool. Three of the world’s six largest VPN providers are owned by a single Israeli firm co-founded by a Unit 8200 alumnus.

The pipeline operates with explicit state sanction. Former intelligence officials told investigators that the Israeli government regards private-sector espionage and security firms as “plausibly deniable” assets, able to operate where uniformed military intelligence cannot.

The Palestine Laboratory, From Blue Wolf To Global Cloud:

‘Battle-Tested’ in Hebron, Deployed Worldwide

The term appears in marketing materials, investor pitch decks, and defence procurement tenders: “battle-tested.” In Israeli military-technology parlance, it carries a specific meaning, validated through live deployment against Palestinian populations under conditions of total surveillance and asymmetric warfare.

In April 2024, The Guardian and subsequent investigations documented the Israeli military’s deployment of Blue Wolf, a facial recognition application installed on soldiers’ personal smartphones. At checkpoints in Hebron (Al-Khalil) and throughout the occupied West Bank, soldiers photograph Palestinians, including children, at random. The images are uploaded to a central biometric database, Red Wolf, which catalogues individuals and assigns movement permissions based on algorithmic risk scoring.

A parallel system, Lavender, developed within Unit 8200 and reportedly supported by cloud infrastructure from Amazon and Google, generated AI-assisted kill lists during the Gaza war. Former intelligence operatives testified that the system assigned every Gazan a proximity-to-Hamas score of 1 to 100; individuals reaching threshold scores were automatically placed on targeting lists, with minimal human review.

“Israel sells two things,” journalist Antony Loewenstein told The Chris Hedges Report in November 2025. “One, what weapons can be used to murder, kill, target Palestinians. But also, how to get away with it. I think Israel sells that concept”.

Between 2018 and 2020, Israeli arms exports averaged $7.5–8.5 billion annually. In 2024, they reached a record $14.8 billion. Surveillance and cyber technologies constitute the fastest-growing segment, with clients spanning authoritarian regimes in Asia, Latin American military governments, and European border-enforcement agencies.

The Normalisation Pipeline:

Human rights scholars characterise the commercialisation model as “automated apartheid”, the transformation of occupation-control infrastructure into exportable software. When facial recognition systems developed to restrict Palestinian movement are deployed at European borders, or predictive policing algorithms refined in East Jerusalem are licensed to American police departments, the underlying methodology remains intact: algorithmic classification, biometric enrollment, and movement restriction applied to populations deemed surplus or suspect.

Wiz itself does not manufacture facial recognition or targeting systems. Its cloud-security platform scans for vulnerabilities across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, a multi-cloud solution that has attracted Fortune 100 clients precisely because of its neutrality across competing infrastructures. Yet the company’s founding DNA, and that of hundreds of analogous Israeli cybersecurity firms, is inseparable from the military ecosystem that incubated it.

“These are not separate worlds,” a former Unit 8200 captain, speaking on condition of anonymity, told investigators in 2025. “The threat modelling, the adversary emulation, the understanding of how networks are penetrated and defended, we learned it in Gaza and the West Bank. The private sector just rebrands it.”

The Winners, Who Gets $32 Billion?

The Founders: $3 Billion Each

According to financial documents reviewed by Globes, each of the four founders holds slightly less than 10% of Wiz shares. At the $32 billion valuation, each will realise approximately $3 billion before taxation.

As Israeli residents, they face capital-gains taxation of 25%, plus an additional 5% levy, a total 30%. Combined, the four founders will contribute approximately NIS 11 billion ($3.1 billion) to the Israel Tax Authority.

Rappaport, who came out as gay at a young age and introduced surrogacy grants for both same-sex and heterosexual couples at Wiz, has been described as an unconventional chief executive. He does not own a car, prefers public transportation, and publicly protested the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul in 2023, temporarily moving Wiz funds overseas. His political activism has not diminished his standing in Israel’s technology sector, where he is regarded as a generational entrepreneur.

The Employees: A $1 Million Average.

Wiz employs approximately 2,500 people, of whom about 500 (20%) are Israeli residents. Employee stock-option distributions are estimated at $2.5 billion total, approximately $1 million per employee on average. Israeli employees will face capital-gains taxation of 25–28%, contributing an additional NIS 460–620 million ($130–175 million).

The Investors: Foreign Funds Dominate.

Foreign venture capital funds hold 48% of Wiz shares and will receive approximately $15 billion in proceeds, almost entirely tax-exempt, contingent on pre-ruling agreements with the Israel Tax Authority.

• Index Fund: $3.5 billion
• Sequoia Capital: $3.2 billion
• Insight Partners: $2.9 billion
• Lightspeed Venture Partners: $1.2 billion

The sole Israeli fund with significant exposure is CyberStarts, led by former Sequoia executive Gili Raanan, which will realise $1.28 billion.

The State: NIS 12 Billion Windfall.

The Israel Tax Authority anticipates total revenue of approximately NIS 12 billion ($3.1 billion) from the transaction, representing one of the largest single tax events in the country’s history. The infusion arrives as Israel sustains wartime expenditure levels and faces mounting fiscal pressure; economists cited in the Israeli business press noted that the deal “will allow the government to continue without enacting major austerity measures”.

Unanswered Questions:

What Does Google Know?

The European Commission determined that Google would not gain “commercially sensitive data” from rival cloud providers through the Wiz acquisition. The ruling addressed competition law, not privacy law, and did not examine what customer data Wiz already possesses, how it is secured, or which governmental actors may have access to it.

Wiz’s platform, by design, scans customers’ cloud environments, including virtual machines, containers, serverless functions, and storage buckets, for misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. The company’s value proposition rests on its capacity to see deeply into clients’ digital infrastructure. That visibility, now under Google’s corporate umbrella, has not been subjected to independent human rights due diligence.

The Unit 8200 Question:

The Pegasus spyware manufactured by NSO Group, also staffed by Unit 8200 veterans, was demonstrated on Palestinians before being sold to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, India, and Mexico. It was subsequently used to surveil journalists, human rights defenders, and at least 14 heads of state, including Emmanuel Macron of France.

No executive of NSO Group has faced criminal liability in Israel, the United States, or Europe for human rights abuses enabled by the company’s products. The Israeli government, which must approve all cyber-weapon export licenses, has consistently defended the industry as a strategic asset.

Wiz does not manufacture spyware. But the same military unit, the same operational ethos, and the same personnel pipeline produced both companies.

The EU’s Calculus:

Brussels’ unconditional approval effectively closes the antitrust chapter. But the political chapter remains open. In 2021, the European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution calling on member states to restrict spyware exports. In 2024, the European Court of Justice ruled that surveillance technologies exported to authoritarian regimes could violate EU human rights law.

Yet when presented with a $32 billion technology acquisition implicating the very same military-surveillance ecosystem, the European Commission confined its analysis to market share percentages.

“The EU is not interested in creating further friction with the Trump administration at the moment,” an anonymous source familiar with the deliberations told Globes. “They have decided not to make antitrust another disputed front.”

Conclusion: The Approval Is Granted. The Questions Remain.

Google will integrate Wiz into its Cloud division while maintaining the company’s independent operations and multi-cloud commitments. Wiz’s 1,800 employees, the majority based in Israel, will receive retention bonuses and remain in place. The deal, as structured, is expected to close by March 2026.

In a statement, Wiz said: “Since this journey began, Wiz has remained steadfast in our mission to empower cloud builders and defenders. By combining Wiz’s deep knowledge of cloud and code with Google’s expertise and scale, we will be able to offer customers more choice in defending against today’s complex threats.”

What remains unchosen is whether the global technology industry will ever reckon with the origins of its “battle-tested” expertise, the occupied checkpoints, the biometric databases, the AI-assisted targeting lists, and the population living under algorithmic classification as a permanent laboratory.

The $32 billion transaction does not answer that question. It simply embeds it, unconditionally approved, into the core infrastructure of the global cloud.