Former NBA athlete Omri Casspi has raised $60 million for his latest venture fund, Swish Ventures, which will invest in early-stage cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure and AI startups. The fund plans to back 10 companies and will invest between $5 million and $7 million per deal.
Swish Ventures is Casspi’s second fund after launching Sheva Capital, a $36 million fund, in 2022. Casspi said it manages Sheva’s portfolio now that its investment period is over. “I am fully committed to continuing to grow our businesses, but we will not be raising another fund under Sheva,” Casspi told TechCrunch, explaining his role in overseeing both funds.
Several Sheva-backed founders are now investors in Swish Ventures, including EON founder Ophir Ehrlich, Amiram Shachar, founder of Upwindand PointFive co-founders Gal Ben-David and Alon Arvatz. They join other institutional investors; Sequoia Capital is an anchor investor in the fund.
Casspi says Swish Ventures will follow a similar thesis to Sheva, focusing on seed investments in “startups led by seasoned entrepreneurs that have the potential to create market-defining businesses.” However, Swish Ventures focuses on cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure and AI – a shift from Sheva’s broader mandate, which included fintech and web3 alongside cybersecurity startups.
The move reflects growing investor interest in cybersecurity and AI, particularly in Israel and the United States, where Casspi has focused its investments.
Israel, in particular, is known for its strength in cybersecurity — the sector brought in more than half of the venture capital raised by Israeli startups in the first six months of 2024, according to Central of national startups.
Likewise, companies like Wiz, which The general public rejected a $23 billion acquisition offer from Google and Aeon, who reached unicorn status within a year of its founding, show Israel’s importance in cloud security and its affinity for manufacturers new to the space. The Wiz founders sold their previous startup, Adallom, to Microsoft in 2015, while the Eon founders sold their last startup, CloudEndure, to Amazon in 2019.
Casspi invested his own money in Acewhile Eon is a Sheva portfolio company.
Casspi, the first Israeli to play in the NBA and former captain of the Israeli national basketball team, is just one of many athletes now venture capitalists. Just last week, Giannis Antetokounmpo became the latest sports figure to enter the world of venture capital. Serena Williams notably runs Serena Ventures, Kevin Durant at 35V, Stéphane Curry owns Penny Jar Capital and Andre Iguodala owns General partnership Mosaique.
Casspi says his companies have about $125 million in assets under management. Other startups in Sheva’s portfolio include Upwind, which today confirmed its valuation of $900 million (Stephen Curry’s Penny Jar is also an investor) and PointFive, whose founders already sold a company to Rapid7 and raised $36 million.
Swish also adds Dana Alexandrovich as an operating partner. Prior to his current role, Alexandrovich was COO of Microsoft in Israel starting in 2021, leading business operations in the Middle East and Africa.
