Wiz Snags Zscaler COO Dali Rajic

Fast-growing cloud cybersecurity startup Wiz snagged a former Zscaler executive as its new chief operating officer and president as the company prepares to go public.

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Wiz announced Monday that Dali Rajic has jumped to the New York-headquartered company after more than four years at cybersecurity firm Zscaler, where he also served as COO and president. Rajic’s last day at publicly traded Zscaler – a company with $34 billion in market capitalization – was Friday.

Wiz raised $300 million from investors at this time last year on a $10 billion valuation, which thrust the preschool-aged company into the front rank of venture-backed cybersecurity companies (see: Wiz Raises $300M on $10B Valuation to Safeguard Cloud Data).

Company leadership vowed Monday that its next milestone will be $1 billion in annual recurring revenue, up from its current $350 million gleaned from customers including “over 40% of the Fortune 100.”

“Dali has successfully scaled some of the world’s most innovative companies, and we’re thrilled to welcome him to the Wiz team,” said Assaf Rappaport, Wiz co-founder and CEO.

Rajic will oversee growth strategy on Wiz’s road to going public, the company said. Wiz, originally founded in Tel Aviv, has 900 employees and plans to add 400 to its headcount, reported Reuters. The planned hiring spree is a marked difference from other cybersecurity firms that continue to lay off employees, some for a second time or a third time.

Wiz offers a cloud-native application protection platform. Its CEO has touted a consolidated approach to detection, vulnerability and misconfiguration. “Our approach to the market is: Bring all the signals into one place, reduce the noise, build trust with the developers and the DevOps teams, and bring them only what’s top of mind or important for them,” Rappaport told Information Security Media Group in February 2023 (see: Wiz CEO on the Need to Consolidate Cloud Security Technology).