"We are in the global top": Omri Casspi raised $250 million for a third fund
Former basketball player and venture capitalist Omri Casspi has completed a $250 million raise for his third fund. The total volume of assets under management at Swish Ventures has reached $800 million.
Omri Casspi, the former basketball player who reinvented himself as a venture capitalist, has completed a $250 million raise for his third fund. Following the raise, the volume of assets under management at Swish Ventures has reached $800 million. Swish began operating in 2025, when Omri Casspi, the fund's founder, served as the sole managing partner.
Among the investors in the new fund are institutional entities from Israel, the American venture capital fund Sequoia, which also invested in Casspi's previous fund, institutional entities from the USA, and several American universities. The fund intends to invest in about 12 companies, with relatively large checks of about $20 million per company, leading jointly alongside another fund or as a follow-on investor. The fund focuses on early investment stages, Seed and A, and operates alongside the Opportunity fund, which allows Swish to invest in companies from the Seed stage through to growth stages.
Despite the skepticism Casspi encountered at the beginning of the road, when he started operating with his first and relatively small seed fund, he managed to gain access to the hottest companies in Israel and the USA and build an interesting portfolio. By the end of 2025, this already allowed him to close a larger raise of $100 million for the Opportunity fund, which invests at various stages.
For example, Casspi's fund is invested in both Wonderful, which raised $550 million yesterday at a valuation of $5 billion, and Upwind, which raised $300 million at a valuation of $3.8 billion. Both companies doubled their value in less than a year. Furthermore, he is invested in other prominent companies in the Israeli high-tech sector, including EON, Irregular, Tenzai, and Glow, most of which operate in the cyber market. However, the highlight of his portfolio is the American AI startup Cognition, which is currently raising capital at a valuation of $47 billion. Just three months ago, it raised $1 billion at a valuation of $26 billion. In total, Swish has invested in 21 companies since its inception, nine of which have become unicorns.
"I know that $20 million is a large amount for checks at the initial stages of a company's life, but I want to find the best opportunities that exist. In the companies I invest in, they usually put in more money than average. It's a small group of exceptional entrepreneurs," says Casspi in a conversation with Calcalist.
"We are in the global top in terms of returns in our funds, and after the Cognition raise, in which I have been investing almost since the company's inception, the aggregate value of the companies will reach almost $100 billion. It was important to me to raise money for the fund from institutional entities in Israel, so that Israeli investors would also profit and gain access to the best companies that exist today, not only in Israel but also abroad. There are institutional entities that have been with me since the first fund," adds Casspi.
