Why Wiz really turned down Google’s $23B offer

Welcome back to Review Week. This week, we’re coming to you right after TechCrunch Disrupt! In case you missed it, we’re highlighting interviews from Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, and Disney star turned Space CEO Bridgit Mendler. Of course, we have news from all over the tech world. Let’s do it.

Why did Wiz turn down $23 billion? Wiz founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport said at TechCrunch Disrupt that turning down Alphabet’s offer was “the hardest decision ever,” but they did it because they believed the cloud security space was a $100 billion opportunity for the company. When Wiz turned down the offer, the startup had a secret value of $12 billion. The CEO admitted that they have other offers, though not as big as Google.

Apple had a big week of revelationsincluding the latest additions to the M series of chips. The company introduced the new M4 Pro, starting alongside the new Mac mini and M4 Max, the latter coming to the MacBook Pro line as an upgrade. Apple has also given a refresh to its desktop accessories, switching from Lightning to USB-C. But the Magic Mouse’s charging port is still awkward on the bottom.

Dropbox is 20% off of its employees. In a letter to employees, CEO Drew Houston said the cloud company was facing a “period of change” and that the goal was to make cuts in areas where Dropbox had “overinvested” while designing a “leaner, more efficient” team structure. The reduction in the number of employees will affect 528 employees.

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News

What is plagiarism? At TechCrunch Disrupt, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas was asked how the company defines “plagiarism.” Srinivas did not say specifically, but he maintained that Perplexity “always cites its own sources” and does not claim ownership of any content. Read more

OpenAI may be building its first AI chip: OpenAI is working with TSMC and Broadcom to build an internal AI chip to run AI models, which could arrive as soon as 2026, Reuters reported. Read more

Turn your design into reality: Arcade AI is a new type of marketplace that allows customers to input their ideas into a generator that generates a variety of design options that will be brought to life as tangible pieces of jewelry. Read more

From Disney Channel to CEO: Former Disney star Bridgit Mendler joined TechCrunch Disrupt to discuss how she founded Northwood Space and why the space startup is committed to solving “uncomfortable problems.” Read more

AI comes to employers: LinkedIn is taking the wraps off its latest AI effort: Recruiting Assistant. The product is designed to handle a wide range of recruitment tasks, from taking scrappy notes to turn job descriptions, to finding candidates and communicating with them. Read more

Matt Mullenweg makes his case: The WordPress founder and Automattic CEO said at TechCrunch Disrupt that he is not concerned that the recent legal drama between his company and WP Engine could lead to a fork of the open source WordPress software. In fact, he said he would accept it. Read more

Olivia Wilde, VC: Actress and director Olivia Wilde quietly launched venture capital firm Proximity Ventures late last year, according to Bloomberg. The company has already made four investments, including biotech company Pendulum Therapeutics. Read more

The piece makes its mark in India: Fintech Slice has merged with North East Small Finance Bank, marking a rare example of a successful startup entering India’s highly regulated banking sector. The merger turns Piece into a banking entity following months of regulatory scrutiny. Read more

The easiest way to code: Announced at GitHub’s annual conference in San Francisco, Spark is an experiment from its GitHub Next labs that allows you to quickly build a small web application using nothing but natural language. Read more

Convert text to podcast: Meta has released an “open” implementation of the viral generate-a-podcast feature on Google’s NotebookLM. Called NotebookLlama, the project can generate a back-and-forth, podcast-style digest of text files uploaded to it. Read more

Zoox calls Tesla’s bluff: Zoox founder and CTO Jesse Levinson doubts Tesla will launch a robotaxi ride service next year. “The main problem is that they don’t have the technology that works,” he said at TechCrunch Disrupt. Read more

And the winner is… : The winner of the Startup Battlefield 200 competition at TechCrunch Disrupt is Salva Health. The company’s Julieta device is an AI-powered portable breast cancer detection device that removes barriers to early screening, ensuring access even in remote locations. Read more