The man who sold Wiz to Google for $32 billion is now backing a scam-fighting startup

Assaf Rappaport spent six years building a company that sold cloud security to large corporations. He has now put money into one that protects individuals from being scammed.

The Wiz founder has invested in Guardio, an Israeli startup that defends consumers against online fraud, in a $40 million round valuing it at $1.1 billion. Existing backers ION Crossover Partners, Union Tech Ventures and Vintage Investment Partners also participated. Guardio has raised $167 million since its founding in 2018.

The money is earmarked for a specific problem. Guardio is building defences against scams generated with artificial intelligence, a category growing quickly because generative tools have made convincing impersonation, cloned voices and personalised phishing cheap to produce at volume. A fraud that once required a human operator can now be run against thousands of targets at once.

That is a different business from the one Rappaport sold. Wiz secured cloud infrastructure for enterprises and charged them accordingly. Guardio sells to the people being defrauded.

Alphabet completed its purchase of Wiz in March for $32 billion, the largest corporate acquisition in Israeli history. Forbes puts Rappaport's fortune at about $2.2 billion, ranking him around 1,626th in the world, and estimates each of his three Wiz co-founders at a similar figure.

He has been unusually active since. Rappaport has backed dozens of Israeli startups, concentrated in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, frequently investing alongside the other Wiz founders. He has also taken positions in venture firms and in Israeli media through the Merit Foundation.

Guardio fits the pattern. It is Israeli, it is cybersecurity, and at $1.1 billion it is early enough that the position can still move.