{"id":827344,"date":"2026-09-03T23:06:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T23:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/827344\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T23:06:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T23:06:42","slug":"first-israeli-nba-player-omri-casspi-announces-250-million-funding-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/827344\/","title":{"rendered":"First Israeli NBA player Omri Casspi announces $250 million funding project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first Israeli to play in the NBA, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/tags\/omri-casspi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Omri Casspi<\/a>, announced on Thursday that his venture capital firm, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/business-and-innovation\/article-880041\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Swish Ventures<\/a>, raised $250 million and reached $800 million in total funding.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The money will be used in the firm\u2019s third fund, which will focus on some 12 high-tech companies in their initial stages &#8211; mainly seed or Series A -, while the average investment will be valued at $20 million.<\/p>\n<p>Swish Ventures has already <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/business-and-innovation\/article-905345\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">invested<\/a> in top companies such as Cognition AI, Applied Compute, EON, and Wonderful, while eight of the 20 companies the firm has invested in have already become unicorns.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">According to the firm, this new fund will focus on startups operating across cybersecurity, technology infrastructure, Physical AI, defense, AI for industrial applications, and government technology.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">\u201cClosing our third fund in a short period of time, with the support of some of the world\u2019s leading institutional investors, is first and foremost a vote of confidence in the founders we back and the credit they deserve,\u201d said Casspi in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The firm was founded in early 2025 and has built a combined valuation of its portfolio companies exceeding $60 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Casspi has operated as the sole managing partner and has brought in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/business-and-innovation\/tech-and-start-ups\/article-903186\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">new backers<\/a> for this third fund, including US pension funds, leading American universities, family offices, and Sequoia Capital.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">\u201cFor us, the new fund is a direct continuation of our focused strategy. We want to be the most meaningful partners to the world\u2019s leading entrepreneurs,\u201d Casspi said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">\u201cWe believe in carefully selecting a small number of exceptional founders each year, allowing us to serve as true partners to them throughout their journey,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first Israeli to play in the NBA, Omri Casspi, announced on Thursday that his venture capital firm,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":827345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3795],"tags":[7,294,98363,13551,12403,293,177,4070,6,33289,98364],"class_list":["post-827344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-memphis-grizzlies","tag-basketball","tag-grizzlies","tag-high-tech","tag-investment","tag-investors","tag-memphis","tag-memphis-grizzlies","tag-memphisgrizzlies","tag-nba","tag-omri-casspi","tag-venture-capital-firm"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117209621063259821","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}