Wiz's Upmarket Advantage Over Lacework

Wiz winning upmarket meant cloud security was shifting from a tool sale to an executive platform sale. Lacework sold well into large cloud native companies with lean security teams, using ML to cut down manual rule writing and bundle multiple workflows in one console. Wiz, by contrast, built around big enterprise buying behavior, multi cloud visibility, fast deployment through agentless scanning, and larger contracts, with estimated ACV near $495K in April 2024.

• Lacework’s average deal size rose from $100K in 2019 to $150K by end 2021, and it landed names like Epic Games and Airbnb. But its core product strength was helping smaller security and DevOps teams manage cloud risk with less manual work, which fit the Fortune 5000 better than the Fortune 500.
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• Wiz scaled much faster into the enterprise. It reached $100M ARR in 18 months, was estimated at $396M ARR in April 2024, and served about 800 customers, implying much larger contracts than Lacework. It also cited customers like Morgan Stanley, Fox, LVMH, and Salesforce, all signals of stronger Fortune 500 penetration.
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• Orca shows what the market rewarded upmarket. Like Wiz, it used agentless scanning with read only cloud access, reducing deployment friction for large enterprises, and sold tiers starting around $50K with expansion into broader modules. The common pattern was easier rollout first, then broader platform upsell after trust was established.
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This market moved toward vendors that could get into the enterprise quickly, prove value without heavy installation, then expand into a wider security suite. That favored Wiz first, and later favored consolidation, with incumbents bundling CNAPP features and Fortinet acquiring Lacework in June 2024. Going forward, cloud security winners are the ones that turn an initial cloud risk scan into a broader, multi product enterprise standard.