The lawsuit filed by Raftt against Wiz is far from an ordinary business dispute. According to the statement of claim, it outlines an extraordinary narrative: a calculated, cynical, and conspiratorial move where the founders of a young startup and a major unicorn allegedly joined forces to transfer a team and technology from one company to another — without paying any consideration to the company itself or its investors.
Even if the court ultimately rules otherwise, the lawsuit offers a rare glimpse into a less glamorous side of the high-tech industry. It depicts a world where, behind polished PR photos, firm handshakes and stories of newly minted millionaires biking to work, there are at times bitter power struggles, founders who turned their backs on those who believed in them, and allegedly an arrogant unicorn that betrayed the very values on which the "Startup Nation" narrative is built.
Who is the plaintiff?
The official plaintiff is Raftt. From a business standpoint, very little remains of the company. Its founders and employees have departed, it has no ongoing commercial operations, and it is effectively an empty corporate shell. In practice, the driving force behind the lawsuit is Raftt's investors - those who believed in the founders' vision at the outset, invested millions of dollars at high risk, and ultimately found themselves without any return on their investment.
Raftt was founded in 2020 by Gahl Saraf and Roy Iarchy with the goal of developing advanced tools for the developer ecosystem. Early on, it successfully raised approximately $5 million from Aleph and Cardumen at a $16 million valuation - an unusually high valuation for a seed round.
In its early years, everything appeared promising. The company grew, the product advanced, and it even had customers and revenue. Toward the end of 2023, as its cash reserves dwindled, Raftt reached a familiar crossroads for young startups: raise additional capital, pursue a sale to a larger company, or shut down. On paper, Raftt seemed to hold strong cards. The founders were optimistic and reported to investors that discussions were underway with major names such as Microsoft, Amazon, and ironicall,- even Google.
Then, unexpectedly, the founders informed investors that negotiations had not materialized, that the company had run out of funds, and that it would cease operations. At the same time, they announced they would be joining Wiz. From the investors' perspective, it appeared to be another painful but familiar episode in the startup world - a young company that failed to survive long enough to reach an exit.
Following the departure of the founders and team, investors were left with a single remaining asset: Raftt's intellectual property. It was meant to be the only possible avenue to recover at least a fraction of the capital invested and the risk assumed. Then, according to the lawsuit, investors discovered that even this final asset was no longer truly theirs. Allegedly, Raftt's intellectual property had effectively transferred, together with the founders and employees, directly into Wiz's products.
Who are the defendants?
At the heart of the case are Raftt's two founders, Gahl Saraf and Roy Iarchy. The two first met during their military service in elite intelligence units and later pursued impressive careers in technology. When they founded Raftt, they were widely seen as a particularly promising entrepreneurial duo - precisely the type of profile venture capital investors seeks.
Trust between them and the investors was strong. The founders were given free rein to manage the company, build the team, and lead product development. However, according to the statement of claim, that trust fractured at the most critical moment in the company's life. While investors were presented with a narrative that the company was searching for a buyer or new investor, the lawsuit alleges that intensive discussions were taking place behind the scenes with Wiz - aimed at transferring Raftt's entire team as a single organic unit.
Wiz is not portrayed in the lawsuit as an innocent third party, but as a key defendant. The claim alleges that the company was an active participant throughout the process: holding direct discussions with the founders without the investors' knowledge, shaping a framework for the transfer of employees, and paying the founders substantial personal compensation.
"The conspiracy"
What stands out in the statement of claim is the picture it paints. Not a typical business dispute, but a concealed and deliberate maneuver. According to Raftt's version of events, the alleged motive was straightforward: the founders' desire to join Wiz together with the entire team and the underlying technology, but to do so outside the framework of a formal acquisition, so that no consideration would be paid to the company and its investors, but instead flow directly to them.
The lawsuit alleges that while the founders were updating the board that they were working to save the company, intensive parallel negotiations were taking place with Wiz behind the investors' backs. According to the statement of claim, Wiz paid founders and employees personal compensation package amounting to approximately $15 million in cash and options, sums that were not fully disclosed to the board, while the company itself received no consideration.
A particularly troubling dimension of the lawsuit concerns the issue of evidence. According to the allegations, after investors began raising questions about the circumstances surrounding the move to Wiz, one of Raftt's founders, Gahl Saraf, accessed the company's servers and deleted hundreds of emails related to the discussions held with Wiz. Those messages, as the lawsuit asserts, were later recovered from backup systems and allegedly reveal detailed coordination that took place behind the board's and investors' backs.
The alleged deletion attempt is portrayed in the statement of claim as a deliberate effort to destroy evidence - a move that, if proven, could carry not only serious civil consequences but potentially criminal implications. For the plaintiffs, it is one of the strongest indicators that this was not an innocent business misjudgment, but a calculated attempt to conceal the true nature of the transaction.
The "smoking gun"
If there is one element in the affair that places the defendants in an especially uncomfortable position, it is the public celebrations. In December 2023, immediately after Raftt's employees joined Wiz, the company began issuing official statements about the "acquisition of Raftt." Festive headlines appeared in the media, interviews with senior executives, social media posts, and reports of a deal worth tens of millions of dollars.
Externally, it appeared to be another glossy exit - a young company absorbed into a successful Israeli unicorn. Yet, according to the statement of claim, while the public was told of a "strategic acquisition," Raftt's investors were told an entirely different story: that the company was shutting down without any consideration.
And that is precisely what makes this chapter so problematic for Wiz and the founders. When investors at the time asked why the move was being described in the media as an acquisition, the founders reportedly dismissed it as nothing more than "marketing bravado" - loose phrasing intended to cast Raftt's closure in a positive light.That explanation, however, raises significant questions. Why would a company of Wiz's scale, with an established legal apparatus, repeatedly use the term "acquisition" if no such transaction had in fact taken place?
The contradiction between the public celebration and what was conveyed to investors is one of the central pillars of the lawsuit and, according to Raftt, lays bare the true character of the move.
The heart of the lawsuit
At the core of the dispute lies the question of what became of Raftt's technology and whether it ultimately found its way into Wiz's new flagship product.
Raftt developed an advanced platform for the developer ecosystem, designed to enable real-time code testing within virtual cloud environments, rather than through slow and cumbersome validation processes. In simple terms, it was a system aimed at dramatically streamlining developers' workflows, enables rapid collaboration and identifying issues at early stages.
Wiz, by contrast, built its reputation as a cloud security company. Yet in September 2024 - less than a year after Raftt's entire team joined the company - Wiz launched a new product called Wiz Code, aimed at developers and offering advanced code analysis within development environments.
According to the lawsuit, Wiz Code performs functions substantially similar to the capabilities developed by Raftt: code scanning and mapping, real-time issue detection, and deep integration into developer workflows. Raftt contends that the short time span between the team's transition (December 2023) and the product launch (September 2024) indicates that the new product was built on technology brought in from outside, rather than developed from scratch within Wiz.
This is a complex allegation to prove, as it would require in-depth technological comparisons. However, if proven, the implications could be far-reaching: not only significant financial damages, but also a tangible threat to one of Wiz's core products.
The Patent
In May 2024, just months after Raftt's team moved to Wiz, Wiz filed a U.S. patent application listing Saraf and Iarchy as inventors alongside additional engineers who had worked at the company. According to the lawsuit, the substance of the patent describes precisely the type of capabilities on which Raftt's platform was based - a system for analyzing code within cloud environments, identifying issues in real time, and providing insights to developers. From Raftt's perspective, this constitutes a written evidence that technology developed within its walls is now being presented as Wiz's intellectual property.
The timeline also raises questions. The team transfer in December 2023, a patent application filed in May 2024, and Wiz Code is launched in September 2024. For the plaintiffs, this sequence is far from coincidental.
The legal significance of patent carries particular weight in this context. Unlike general allegations of "product similarity," a patent is a formal and detailed document asserting ownership over specific technology. As such, Raftt argues that its very existence constitutes direct evidence that the technology was, in effect, transferred to Wiz.
These allegations are further reinforced, the lawsuit argues, by public statements from Wiz own senior executives. and the company's co-founder and CTO, Ami Luttwak, said in an interview with Geektime: "This is a strategic acquisition… Wiz's goal is to take Raftt's existing knowledge and product and, within a few months, turn it into a product Wiz can offer." From the plaintiffs' perspective, such remarks amount to an almost explicit acknowledgment that Raftt's technology served as the foundation for the development of Wiz Code.
Another point emphasized in the lawsuit concerns timing. Patent applications are published to the public only 18 months after filing. This means that Raftt's investors were, for a significant period, unaware that a formal document existed asserting Wiz's ownership over technology they contend belonged to them.
For Raftt, this marked a moment described as a "delayed discovery." While attempting to sell the intellectual property that remained in their hands, investors allegedly realized that, according to the patent filings, the technology was already being presented as the asset of another company. If proven, the consequences could extend far beyond monetary damages, raising fundamental questions about ownership rights in Wiz Code and perhaps even Wiz's right to continue marketing it.
Wiz Code is not a marginal feature in Wiz's portfolio. It is one of the company's flagship products, and the lawsuit may argue that its launch in 2024 was a key driver behind Wiz's valuation surge - from Google's initial $23 billion offer to the final $32 billion transaction.
A shadow over one of Israel's greatest high-tech success story
Ultimately, Raftt path to a legal victory will not be straightforward. In court, it will need to prove two key claims: first, that the move to Wiz was in fact a disguised transaction conducted behind investors' backs; and second, that Wiz Code is materially based on the intellectual property Raftt developed. Establishing such claim, especially in the technology sector, is complex and requires in-depth analysis and unequivocal evidence.
Wiz, for its part, was quick to respond, characterizing the lawsuit as opportunistic and driven by envy of its success. The statement of claim, however, lays out a far more detailed account: documents, quotes, timelines, and a patent application that together raise substantive questions.
In court, broad assertions of jealousy will not suffice. The company will be required to provide concrete and well-supported answers. Should the allegations ultimately be proven, the case could cast a heavy shadow over one of the most celebrated success stories in Israeli high-tech — and over the individuals behind it, who in recent years, become near cultural icons.
