‘Zionism 2.0’: Former NBA player Omri Casspi raises $60m to invest in Israeli startups
The athlete’s second seed venture capital fund, Swish Ventures, seeks to fund locally founded businesses in cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure and AI
Sharon Wrobel is a tech reporter for The Times of Israel.
Former NBA player Omri Casspi has raised $60 million in seed capital to invest in early-stage startups and companies founded by Israeli serial entrepreneurs developing technologies in the areas of cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, and artificial intelligence.
Swish Ventures is Casspi’s second seed venture capital fund after stepping onto the court of tech investments two years ago following his retirement from professional basketball as the first Israeli player to break through in the NBA.
The new fund hopes to invest $5 million to $7 million in about 10 startups each. Among Swish’s investors are venture capital fund Sequoia, Israeli and US institutional investors, and more than 25 serial entrepreneurs, including EON founder Ophir Ehrlich, PointFive founder Gal Ben-David, Upwind co-founder Amiram Shachar, Granulate (sold to Intel) co-founder Asaf Ezra, and Armis founders Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael. The fund manages a total of $125 million in assets.
“We are launching Swish at a time when the importance of the high-tech sector to Israel is maturing,” Casspi told The Times of Israel. “In this not easy climate during war and with high interest rates, we see this period as Zionism 2.0, a time and age of building generational companies from Israel, and we want to take advantage of that and help them build a great industry.”
“There are a lot of great founders coming back to build the next big business, the next big firm, and they have a lot of experience and we are right there to potentially take advantage and help build the future of the tech ecosystem in Israel,” he said.
Despite launching during a challenging period in which Israel remains entangled in a multi-front war, Casspi said the new fund received $172 million in commitments from investors — though he decided not to expand the size of the financing round.
In November last year, about a month after war broke out with the Hamas terror group, Casspi put his own money in the game to help bring tech billionaire Elon Musk to Israel. During the visit, Musk met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog. He also toured Gaza border communities ravaged by the Hamas terror group’s devastating onslaught on October 7, which killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage.
“We have a couple of common friends, so we invited Elon to Israel with the underlying premise that he is a great friend of Israel, and I was fortunate to have an amazing team doing this with me,” said Casspi. “This was not a political trip, but it was for Elon, one of the most influential people in the world, to visit Gaza border communities and see things firsthand, which created a big impact on people when it was posted on social media platforms.”
“The trip at the end of the day cost me a significant amount of money, but it was definitely worth it, as it put the cause of bringing back the hostages to the front [of the] news the following day,” he said.
Casspi emphasized that the visit shows how the “high-tech sector serves as an ambassador for Israel during these challenging times.”
“We have also partnered with Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Meta and a board member of some of the largest companies in the US, to expose facts about Hamas’s crimes that she has shared worldwide,” said Casspi. “Through the industry’s network, we had the privilege of participating in raising significant donations for the rehabilitation of communities in the Gaza perimeter.”
“The high-tech infrastructure allows us to serve national interests and is more important than ever,” he added.
Asked about how investors feel about parking their money in a fund operating in a country at war, Casspi said that although there was concern following the October 7 onslaught, the tech ecosystem’s response and resilience has been “surprising.”
“The industry continues to draw foreign investments into the country,” said Casspi. “The amount of capital being directed towards Israel is probably more than ever now, as international firms have led 40 seed rounds in Israel in 2024, which is a record number.”
The former captain of Israel’s national basketball team is following in the footsteps of other athletes who ventured into the venture capital and business development world after their retirement. Tal Brody, the American-born former team captain of Maccabi Tel Aviv and one of the most famous Israeli sportsmen, is a senior adviser at Cukierman & Co. investment house and has been serving as Israel’s ambassador of goodwill.
Casspi said the transition to investor after his basketball career came about when looking for a new challenge even before moving back to Israel at the end of 2019.
“The high-tech ecosystem in Israel is amazing, and there’s a lot of potential,” said Casspi. “When I was playing for the Warriors in San Francisco I started to examine how I can collaborate with some of the folks in the ecosystem.
“I was fortunate to meet a lot of great folks in the ecosystem to show me the ropes and get to know the right people and then, essentially, identify which companies and industries I like,” he said.
