Here’s where Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport is looking for deals after raising $1 billion

In the 80s and 90s, there was an electronic store chain called The Wiz with a catchphrase so infectious that people used it interchangeably with the name. The commercials are still on YouTube and the muzak, synth-pop jingle rings: Nobody beats the Wiz.

It’s a piece of pop culture that my editor introduced me to as we’ve been tracking cloud security startup Wiz’s ascension, and the tune seems to come up a lot lately. Yesterday the company notched its latest jingle-worthy milestone when it announced it had raised $1 billion, at a $12 billion valuation.

The Series E round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Thrive Capital. Existing Wiz investors include Index Ventures, Cyberstarts, Greylock, Greenoaks, Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Wellington Management.

This is a pretty big step up from the last round the company raised, Wiz CEO and cofounder Assaf Rappaport told Term Sheet over the phone.

“It goes to the maturity of the company and our ability to be bolder—focus on innovation, leadership, go-to-market, R&D, but also inorganic growth,” said Rappaport. “I think we’re mature enough to be looking to grow inorganically and organically, so that’s different. There are also different kinds of investors.”

Andreessen Horowitz, for example, is a new investor in Wiz, as the company looks to ramp up its already-running M&A strategy. There are two categories of acquisitions that Rappaport is pursuing right now. The first are in the mold of Gem Security, the company’s latest acquisition (confirmed exclusively by Fortune). Those companies are the “stellar companies, growing super fast with an amazing team and amazing technology,” said Rappaport.

And then there’s a second category—the “ex-unicorns, companies that were super hype in 2020, 2021 and, since then, they’re maybe not projected to be a public company, and their investors are looking for an exit,” Rappaport said.

The ex-unicorn business is a tricky one, of course. Recently, Wiz was reportedly looking at a deal for cybersecurity firm Lacework that fell through. (The company says it is “always exploring compelling M&A opportunities.”)

An IPO is very expressly the long-term plan for four-year-old Wiz.

“I think that the recent round is actually going to accelerate us towards an IPO," said Rappaport, who suggested he’s eyeing the next two to three years, depending on market conditions.

As we talk, Rappaport uses the phrase “winner takes all” more than once. I asked him about it.

“I think basically it's true to technology as a whole,” he said. “If you look in different markets, I would say that in cybersecurity, the ability for a company to continue to invest more, innovate, and have more customers…it’s like a flywheel, in a way. We’ve seen this before with Endpoint and CrowdStrike—they're kind of becoming an indisputable market leader. We saw that with network security with Palo Alto and, hopefully, we're starting to see it with cloud security.”

You could perhaps say that the goal is this: Nobody beats the Wiz.

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com