Former NBA Player Omri Casspi's Swish Ventures Manages Approximately $800 Million
Former NBA role player Omri Casspi's Tel Aviv-based firm Swish Ventures has completed the third phase of fundraising with approximately $250 million, raising its managed assets to about $800 million. Investors include Sequoia Capital, U.S. pension funds, university endowments, Israeli institutions, and family offices.
Casspi was the first Israeli player to play in the NBA, competing for about ten years before retiring in 2021. After the early fund Sheva merged into Swish, he became the sole managing partner. The new fund plans to invest in about 12 companies, with approximately $20 million per investment, primarily focusing on seed and Series A rounds, and can co-lead or follow other funds, with an additional opportunity fund for subsequent rounds. The focus areas include cybersecurity, tech infrastructure, physical AI, defense, industrial AI, and government technology.
Forbes reported that in January 2024, he hosted the founder of Cognition at the Chase Center in San Francisco, and the next day participated in the company's seed round, which was valued at about $150 million at the time; Cognition has since been reported to be approaching a new round of financing, with a valuation of about $47 billion. Among the approximately 20 companies in the portfolio, 8 have become unicorns, with a total valuation exceeding $60 billion, including Cognition, Applied Compute, Eon, Wonderful, Upwind, and others. Wonderful recently raised $550 million, with a valuation of $5 billion; Upwind raised $300 million, with a valuation of $3.8 billion.
Mechanically, the buyers are dollar LPs looking to enter Israeli cybersecurity and AI projects, while the sellers are former players who can leverage their court relationships to meet founders. The event is driven by the increased valuations of projects within the portfolio; funds from pensions and Sequoia are entering seed and Series A checks, benefiting those who can issue $20 million checks through a concentrated portfolio strategy, while the burden falls on a single GP who must select the right track among about 12 positions.
Public information has not disclosed the realized exit multiples or the final closing date details for the third fund; the $800 million refers to managed assets rather than distributed profits.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Casspi is not pursuing a star athlete entertainment fund, but rather connecting Israeli intelligence and cybersecurity startup projects with the Silicon Valley relationships he built during his NBA career. The Cognition deal serves as a model: first invite people to watch games, then participate in the seed round, and use the density of unicorns to prove to pensions that larger sums can be managed. Concentrated holdings increase hit rates but also raise single-point risks.
The capital path involves merging Sheva, increasing the opportunity fund, and expanding the ticket size in the third phase. The motivation is to use Israeli projects as an entry point while the prices in AI infrastructure and cybersecurity have not yet been saturated by large U.S. funds. Resource mobilization relies on Sequoia's endorsement to reduce LP due diligence costs, controlling attention with about 12 projects instead of spreading small checks widely.
A comparable scenario is the differentiation of retired athletes entering venture capital: most stop at consumer brands, while a few, like him, receive opportunities in enterprise software and defense. In terms of industry positioning, Israeli cybersecurity and AI are still in the phase of wholesaling projects to U.S. pensions; the player identity opens doors, and the density of unicorns in the portfolio determines the scale of the next phase.
The structural judgment belongs to capital concentration: pricing power shifts from 'who can invest in the most companies' to 'who can identify the next enterprise software giant in the seed round.' The mechanism is that LPs are chasing the replication rights of already appreciated portfolios, while former players provide relationships, and the fund offers follow-on positions; when there are unicorns among the 8, the $250 million new fund becomes an additional bet on the same filtering funnel.
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
Relationships open doors, but portfolio density keeps them.
Those who can manage pensions have usually already backed a giant.
As checks grow larger, mistakes will also magnify by the same factor.