Almost seven years after asserting its first fund, Sapphire Sport — the enterprise fund targeted on sports activities, media, and leisure — is spinning out from Sapphire Ventures. The fund will rebrand as an impartial enterprise agency, 359 Capital.

The agency’s new identify is a tribute to the sub-four-minute mile, a feat as soon as deemed humanly not possible however finally achieved by way of rigorous dedication and perseverance. 359 Capital co-founder and managing accomplice Michael Spirito stated that the identify displays the agency’s core precept of serving to its portfolio founders obtain the not possible.

The separation from Sapphire Ventures, an funding agency with about $11 billion in property underneath administration, was at all times on “the imaginative and prescient board,” stated Spirito. “We’re all grown up and able to go away house.”

Sapphire Sport, which is at the moment midway by way of investing its second fund of $181 million, has at all times maintained a separate group of restricted companions from Sapphire Ventures. Its LPs are all deeply tied to the sports activities business, together with main names like Metropolis Soccer Group, adidas, AEG, Madison Sq. Backyard, Sinclair, and dozens of workforce homeowners.

“After we began in 2019, the identify Sapphire Sport wasn’t simply alliterative and sounded cool,” Spirito stated. “Sport captured the LP group.”

Seven years later, the sports-focused LPs nonetheless leverage their relationship with the agency to achieve insights into rising tech firms throughout the media and sports activities panorama, Spirito stated.

A number of the startups 359 Capital has backed embody Beehiiv, a creator-focused e-newsletter; a web-based on line casino, Betty Labs; a sports activities media platform; Additional time, an AI search engine; Perplexity, a profitable AI browser; and Tonal, a house gymnasium system.

The agency’s complete portfolio of 30 firms and all of its funding employees will transfer over to 359 Capital. The transitioning employees consists of Spirito, co-founders of Sapphire Ventures David Hartwig and Doug Higgins, and newly promoted accomplice Rico Mallozzi.

As 359 Capital, the agency will proceed to focus totally on Sequence A and Sequence B startups, writing checks between $2 million to $10 million. The agency will proceed to take a position from its second fund by way of the primary half of 2027, Spirito stated.

359 Capital could have high-profile competitors on the planet of sports-focused enterprise capital. Courtside Ventures, backed by Shaquille O’Neal and Michael Jordan, is within the strategy of elevating a fourth fund of $100 million, in accordance with an SEC submitting.