Assaf Rappaport

Assaf Rappaport is an Israeli technology and cybersecurity entrepreneur, co-founder and chief executive officer of the cloud-security company Wiz, and co-founder of Adallom, which was acquired by Microsoft. In less than two decades, he moved from Israel’s military-technological excellence track and computer-science training into the center of the global cybersecurity industry, becoming one of the figures most closely associated with a new generation of Israeli entrepreneurship: founders who build global companies, rely on deep teamwork, and translate expertise formed in academia, the IDF and Israeli high tech into products used by organizations around the world.

Rappaport’s story is not only the story of a large exit or a company valuation. It is a story about building technological trust at a time when cloud systems, business data and artificial intelligence have become basic infrastructure for modern life and the economy. At Adallom, Microsoft and Wiz, he worked around the same central problem: how organizations can use advanced cloud technologies without losing control, visibility and security. In that sense, his contribution reaches beyond cybersecurity itself and touches the ability of companies, institutions and the public to operate safely in a complex digital world.

Early life, education and an Israeli excellence track

Rappaport was born on August 28, 1983, in Israel. According to the supplied source material, he grew up in Tel Aviv and studied at Alliance High School. Already as a young student he followed an accelerated academic path, beginning university studies while still in high school and later joining Talpiot, one of the IDF’s most demanding programs for training research and development leaders in science, engineering and defense technology.

He completed a bachelor’s degree in physics, mathematics and computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and later earned a master’s degree in computer science from the Technion. This combination — physics and mathematics on one side, computer science and information security on the other — shaped his approach as an entrepreneur: a capacity to understand complex systems, analyze risk, and build infrastructure-level solutions rather than narrow point applications.

Military service and defense technology

Rappaport served in the technological arm of Israeli military intelligence and is also associated in the supplied material with Unit 8200. During this period, he met Ami Luttwak, Roy Reznik and Yinon Costica, who would become central partners in his professional life. The link between that military-technological service and later entrepreneurship is not incidental: Israeli intelligence and technology units have served for many founders as a training ground in early responsibility, problem-solving under constraints, small-team execution and systems thinking about data, attack, defense and real-time operations.

Rappaport’s importance, however, is not simply that he passed through such a framework. It is that he helped translate the discipline and knowledge formed there into global civilian companies. In doing so, he represents an important strand of Israeli high-tech heritage: the movement from defense and scientific capability into tools used by corporations, institutions and civilian users across the world.

Adallom: securing the software-as-a-service world

After his military service, Rappaport worked at McKinsey, and in 2012 he co-founded Adallom with his partners. The company focused on securing organizational use of online software services, a field that grew quickly as large organizations moved into cloud services and software as a service. Adallom sought to give organizations visibility into what was happening inside their online systems, identify unusual behavior, detect risk and protect sensitive data.

Adallom mattered because of both timing and perspective. It was founded when organizations already understood that the cloud was not a marginal add-on but a fundamental change in how work was done, while many still lacked adequate tools to manage security risk in that new environment. In 2015, Adallom was acquired by Microsoft for approximately $320 million. For Rappaport and his partners, this was a turning point: from a young Israeli startup into one of the world’s largest technology companies, and from a focused solution into broader responsibility for cloud security at international scale.

Microsoft Israel: young leadership in a global development center

Following the acquisition of Adallom, Rappaport joined Microsoft and led cloud-security activity. In 2018 he was appointed general manager of Microsoft Israel Research and Development, a major role in one of the company’s important development centers in Israel. According to the supplied material, the appointment stood out both because of his relatively young age and because of the scale of responsibility: a research and development center of roughly 1,500 employees and deep activity in cloud, cybersecurity and global products.

This period strengthened his position as a leader able to move between two worlds: the fast and flexible culture of a startup on one side, and the complex structure of a multinational corporation on the other. That ability became especially important later, when Wiz had to grow at exceptional speed, work with major enterprise customers, and preserve product clarity in a crowded and fast-moving market.

Wiz: an Israeli company that reshaped cloud security

In 2020, Rappaport co-founded Wiz with Ami Luttwak, Roy Reznik and Yinon Costica — the longtime partners who had accompanied him from earlier service and entrepreneurship. Wiz was born at the beginning of a period in which organizations accelerated their move to cloud infrastructure, remote work and multi-cloud environments. Instead of treating each risk as a separate incident, the company offered a broader approach: continuous mapping of the cloud environment, identification of connections among vulnerabilities, permissions, data and configurations, and presentation of a single risk picture that allows security teams to understand what truly matters.

The value of Wiz lay not only in its technology, but in the relative simplicity with which it tried to present a complicated reality. Large organizations often suffer from too many alerts and too many tools that do not communicate with one another. Wiz built a product language intended to connect security, infrastructure and development, and to make cloud risk something that can be seen, prioritized and fixed. This is especially important in an age when every significant company becomes, in part, a software company, and every security failure can become a business, public or even national event.

Wiz grew with unusual speed and became known as one of the fastest-growing software companies in the world. According to the supplied research, the company reached multibillion-dollar valuations within a short period, served a significant share of Fortune 100 companies, and became a symbol of Israeli capacity to build an independent cybersecurity company at global scale. In July 2024, Wiz rejected a major acquisition offer from Google and chose to continue on a path of growth. In March 2025, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced an agreement to acquire Wiz for approximately $32 billion. On March 11, 2026, Google announced the completion of its acquisition of Wiz. According to announcements by Google and Google Cloud, Wiz joined Google Cloud while continuing to serve customers across multi-cloud environments, and Rappaport continued to be described after the closing as co-founder and CEO of Wiz.

Teamwork as a core part of his business legacy

One of the most distinctive features of Rappaport’s story is the continuity of partnership. Ami Luttwak, Roy Reznik and Yinon Costica are not side figures in the story; they are part of the way Adallom and Wiz were built. This culture — a founding team that has known one another for years, divides responsibility, moves together across companies and preserves trust through different phases — is one reason Rappaport’s story matters for understanding contemporary Israeli entrepreneurship.

In a world where entrepreneurship is sometimes presented as the story of a lone genius, Rappaport’s path emphasizes a different truth: great companies are built through strong teams, trust among partners, the ability to recruit excellent people, and the understanding that technological leadership is also organizational leadership. This contribution is especially important for younger generations of Israeli founders and engineers, because it offers a model of excellence that is not separated from partnership.

Public activity, inclusion and philanthropy

Alongside his business activity, Rappaport has also been known for social and public involvement. According to the supplied material, he is active in LGBTech, an organization that works to raise awareness in business and high tech of the needs of LGBTQ employees. In 2016 he helped establish a scholarship program for the transgender community together with the Ma’avarim organization, and later promoted surrogacy grants while leading Microsoft Israel Research and Development and at Wiz. In the context of Israel’s high-tech industry, these actions helped broaden the conversation about respectful workplaces, equal opportunity and recognition of different family needs.

In 2024, Rappaport and Yinon Costica placed 1% of Wiz shares for donation through the Merit Spread Foundation. After the Google transaction, the value of that allocation was estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The foundation, according to reviewed reports, was also involved in philanthropic activity in Israel after October 7 and in initiatives related to strengthening civil society. The allocation of a meaningful equity stake to public purposes before the company’s largest value realization is an important part of the story: it reflects an understanding that technological success can and should be connected to social responsibility.

Media and civil society

In 2026, Rappaport’s name was also linked to a public move in the media field, when a group of high-tech entrepreneurs led by him and backed by the Merit Spread Foundation pursued control of Israel’s Reshet 13 television network. According to reports, the move was presented as an attempt to invest in a broad, independent and nonpartisan Israeli news channel, with a commitment to editorial independence. It was also reported that the foundation would acquire the activity of the Israeli entertainment Instagram page Israel Bidur.

The media field remains different from Rappaport’s central technological activity, so it should be presented carefully: not as the core of his career, but as evidence of a broader engagement with public infrastructure, social trust and Israel’s information space. For a figure who built his reputation around information security, it is meaningful that later public activity also touches questions of media, reliability, institutional independence and technology’s effect on society.

Recognition and wider influence

Over the years Rappaport has appeared on Israeli and international lists of promising young leaders, influential figures and important Jewish and technological personalities. According to the supplied material, he was selected for TheMarker’s list of promising young Israelis under 40, was named among Globes’ people of the year with his Adallom co-founders, ranked among TheMarker’s influential figures, was chosen by The Jerusalem Post as one of the world’s 50 most influential Jews, and was included in the 2024 TIME100 Next list.

Such lists are limited by nature, but in Rappaport’s case they reflect a real phenomenon: his transformation from a talented Israeli cybersecurity professional into a figure who represents a generation of global Israeli entrepreneurs. His influence can be measured in employees, customers, investments and company value, but also in the image he projects: Israel as a center of cloud security, product innovation, deep technical teams and the ability to build companies that compete at the heart of the global market.

Contemporary Israeli and Jewish meaning

Assaf Rappaport’s story is rooted in 21st-century Israel: strong academia, technological military service, fast entrepreneurship, international networks and complex social questions. It shows how knowledge created in Israeli frameworks can become global infrastructure, and how a field often seen as technical and closed — cybersecurity and cloud security — becomes part of the basic safety of a modern economy.

In a broader Jewish sense, his legacy is connected to traditions of learning, responsibility, institution-building and practical action in a changing reality. Rappaport is not a figure from the distant past, but from the dynamic present; that is precisely why accurate documentation of his work matters. Heritage is not only the memory of what has been, but also an understanding of the people who, in our own time, shape the tools, values and institutions that will influence future generations.

Why this legacy belongs in Moreshet

Assaf Rappaport merits inclusion in Moreshet because his story connects several central axes of contemporary Israeli and Jewish life: academic excellence, technological service, global cybersecurity entrepreneurship, the building of companies that employ and influence people beyond Israel’s borders, and social and philanthropic engagement. Adallom and Wiz are not only successful companies; they are evidence of the ability of Israeli knowledge to become global tools that protect information, organizations and infrastructure in the age of cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

Documenting him on Moreshet.com matters because it allows Israeli heritage to be seen not only through leaders, artists or fighters of the past, but also through the builders of today’s digital infrastructure. Rappaport represents a generation whose influence is measured in code, information security, global organizations, social responsibility and attempts to shape stronger institutions. His place in Moreshet therefore rests on his practical and continuing contribution to Israeli society, the global economy and the meaning of Jewish-Israeli innovation in our time.