Google’s finally off to see the Wiz after failing to seal the deal last year. The tech giant signed a definitive agreement to buy Wiz for $32 billion — Google’s largest deal ever, more than double its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola in 2012 (bye bye, Moto).

Wiz provides cybersecurity programs that monitor companies’ data across multiple clouds, including Amazon’s and Oracle’s, finding and recommending fixes for weaknesses that hackers could exploit and handling any ongoing breaches. TechCrunch reports that the five-year-old startup now makes $700 million in annual revenue, and it’s eyeing $1 billion.

Wiz walked away from Google’s $23 billion buyout offer last year, reportedly because of antitrust concerns. But after exploring an IPO, Wiz came back to the table. Google expects the deal to close next year if regulators (who are currently investigating Google’s search and ad businesses) give it the go-ahead.

The massive acquisition could give Google an edge as AI accelerates Big Tech’s race to win over cloud customers.

Head in the Clouds

Wiz will fit in Google’s cloud unit, which accounted for about 12% of the tech giant’s revenue in the most recent quarter. Still, Google is in third place when it comes to cloud market share, behind rivals Amazon and Microsoft.

Amazon’s and Microsoft’s cloud sectors are both $100 billion-per-year businesses, while Google Cloud brought in less than half of that last year. But Google Cloud is the fastest-growing of the trio, and the tech giant could leapfrog Microsoft with its safety-first focus:

• Google plans to invest $75 billion in its AI-powered cloud infrastructure this year, similar to its rivals.
• Before buying Wiz, Google acquired two cybersecurity companies in 2022, Siemplify and Mandiant.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s safety reputation has suffered in recent years. Chinese government hackers breached Microsoft’s cloud network in 2023, accessing the email inboxes of federal officials including the Commerce Secretary. A government board investigated the event and pinned the blame on Microsoft’s lax practices, saying the hack was “preventable and should have never occurred.”

Double-edge Up Ahead: AI could make cybersecurity even more important. It’ll bring in more business — both because it leans on cloud infrastructure to operate and because cloud companies can sell AI-infused offerings — as well as introduce new vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. Google’s trying to capture all of AI’s upside while minimizing its risks.

You can do a lot in five minutes — make a phone call, do some stretching, brush your teeth. Until now, charging an EV most definitely was not one of the possibilities.

Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD, however, says that its latest and greatest charging platform renders that situation obsolete. Its ability to fully juice up BYD batteries in five minutes means EVs can now refuel in about as much time as a typical stop at a gas station — further widening China’s lead over American competitors. And all while the Trump 2.0 administration moves to pause government spending on EV-charging infrastructure, no less.

System Shock

According to BYD, the charging platform — dubbed Super e-Platform — will be able to reach a peak charging speed of 1,000 kilowatts, which means its latest cars can achieve a charge carrying 249 miles worth of juice in about five minutes. That’s compared with Tesla’s latest and greatest superchargers, which the automaker says can deliver a peak charging speed of 500 kilowatts for a roughly 15-minute charging time and around 167 miles worth of juice. Mercedes-Benz, meanwhile, announced last week that its latest EVs can achieve around a 200-mile range in around 10 minutes of charging.

Still, achieving those charging speeds in the US remains quite rare. According to the Department of Transportation, it takes anywhere from four to 10 hours for the average EV to achieve a full-charge using typical “Level 2” chargers (mostly used in homes), while publicly available direct-current fast-chargers take just under an hour to deliver an 80% charge.

And, of course, charging speed is only half the battle. When it comes to charging infrastructure, China continues to maintain a sizeable lead:

• As part of its announcement, BYD said it would install 4,000 ultra-fast charging stations across China. As of July of last year, China had around 3.2 million public charging ports, compared with just 900,000 in Europe, and a measly 181,000 in the US, according to most estimates.
• “The ultimate solution is to make charging as quick as refueling a gasoline car,” BYD chairman and president Wang Chuanfu said at the platform’s launch event this week.

Slow Rider: Recent sales pitch on the White House lawn aside, Trump 2.0 seems to be going out of its way to slow domestic EV firms. Last month, the Federal Highway Administration (FWHA) put a pause on some $3 billion in funding earmarked for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program to build out EV charging infrastructure. A program that, to be clear, has proven remarkably slow in building out EV charging infrastructure. Launched as part of the 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the program to date has installed just 56 charging stations and has awarded just 900 contracts for future stations, according to NPR. Suffice to say: The US feels no need for EV speed.

Markets have been tested by the unexpected daily for weeks now. Even by those standards, today’s test, which everyone saw coming, is a big one. The Federal Reserve is widely expected to maintain its key interest rate at the end of a two-today meeting, as investors contend with sticky inflation and uncertainty about whether the Trump administration’s tariff wars will make it worse.

A new survey from Bank of America shows traders already rotating out of US equities in what analysts called a “bull crash” driven by fears of “stagflation, trade war, [and the] end of U.S. exceptionalism.” But they’re not predicting a recession or fleeing to bonds, either.

Cash and Caution

A rotation happens when investors move from equities or indexes that represent one leading trend into another part of the market, a different geography, or different forms of investment. And with a selloff in the past month, which temporarily put the S&P 500 in correction territory last week, there has been reasonable cause for tinkering with investment strategies.

For example, evidence suggests a rotation out of high-valued tech stocks so far this year: After returning 31% last year, they have returned just 0.5% in 2025, according to the Morningstar US Technology Index. At the same time, investors appear to be rotating into cheaper stocks: Basic materials, the only sector to post a loss last year, is up 4.7% in 2025, according to Morningstar data. Healthcare and value stocks, which lagged the market last year, have also performed well.

On Tuesday, BofA’s latest monthly Global Fund Manager Survey of 171 respondents suggested concern, but not alarm:

• According to the survey, investors’ allocation to US equities fell 40% month-over-month in March, the biggest monthly drop on record. Meanwhile, the share allocated to cash rose to 4.1% from 3.5%, the biggest monthly increase since December 2021. While cash hoarding can suggest fears of a downturn, it’s still well below the 6% cash allocation in October 2022 that triggered Wall Street forecasts of recession.
• Investors have also soured on growth: The percentage of those who predicted a diminishing global growth rate went from 2% in February to a whopping 44% this month. But only 11% expect a downturn and BofA noted fund managers are positioning themselves “nowhere near extreme bear/close-your-eyes-and-buy levels.”

BofA’s survey said 55% of respondents believe the biggest market risk is that a “trade war triggers global recession” — the biggest consensus around one risk since the pandemic in April 2020.

Buy the Blip: With no apparent recession fears and a lack of bullish sentiment, one could consider it’s not yet time to buy into the recent market tumble or expect a larger dip to emerge. However, corporate insiders seem to suggest now is the time to pony up and nab some cheap equities: A gauge of insider sentiment maintained by the Washington Service, and reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday, showed the ratio of buyers to sellers jumped to 0.46 this month from 0.31 in January. Moderna’s CEO Stephane Bancel, who bought $5 million in company stock this month and whose firm is in the recently attractive healthcare sector, was one of those who helped tip the ratio.