Omri Casspi made history as the first Israeli-born player in the NBA. Now he is making a different kind of history in venture capital. The former forward, who retired from professional basketball and pivoted to tech investing, has closed a $250 million fund — a milestone that cements his firm as a serious player in the global startup ecosystem, according to a Calcalist report published this week. The raise follows a string of high-profile early bets that have paid off spectacularly, giving Casspi’s team the track record to attract institutional capital at scale.
The timing is notable. Venture fundraising has been punishing for most emerging managers over the past two years, with limited partners pulling back and demanding proof of returns before committing. That Casspi’s firm closed a quarter-billion-dollar vehicle in that environment says as much about the quality of its portfolio as it does about the name on the door. For context on how competitive the cloud security slice of that portfolio has become, Future Wire previously covered how Upwind’s funding pushed the startup toward a $3.8 billion valuation — a round Casspi’s firm was positioned in early.
The Bets That Built the Track Record
Three portfolio companies in particular gave the fund its credibility. Cognition, the AI coding startup behind the Devin autonomous software engineer, became one of the most talked-about AI investments of 2024 after reaching a $2 billion valuation at a speed that stunned the industry. Upwind, the cloud security firm, closed a $300 million round and is now valued at approximately $3.8 billion. Wonderful, a consumer and commerce-focused company in the portfolio, rounded out a trio of wins that demonstrated range across sectors rather than concentration in a single theme.
What makes these picks notable is their timing. Getting into Cognition before Devin captured the imagination of the developer world, and into Upwind before the cloud security spending surge hit full stride, required conviction well ahead of consensus. That kind of early-stage judgment is exactly what limited partners pay for and rarely get consistently. Casspi’s team has now delivered it across at least three distinct verticals — AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, and consumer — which dramatically reduces the argument that the returns were sector-specific luck.
What a $250 Million Fund Means for the Next Bets
A $250 million fund is large enough to write meaningful checks at both the seed and Series A stage without being so large that the firm is forced to chase late-stage deals where the asymmetric upside compresses. That sizing is a deliberate strategic position. It keeps Casspi’s team in the earliest, highest-leverage moments of a company’s life — the phase where the Cognition and Upwind investments were made — while giving it enough capital to follow on and protect ownership as breakout companies raise successive rounds at higher valuations.
The Israeli tech corridor is a particular focus. Casspi’s background and network give the firm natural deal flow from Tel Aviv’s deep engineering talent pool, which continues to punch well above its weight in cybersecurity, AI, and defense technology. That geographic edge matters in a market where the best deals are often won before a formal process begins. As Future Wire has noted in reporting on Israeli startup scale-up strategies, founders from that ecosystem are increasingly building with a U.S. commercial footprint from day one, which fits neatly with what a fund of this profile can offer beyond just capital. With $250 million deployed over the coming years, the real question is which portfolio company becomes the next name in Casspi’s highlight reel.
