BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo has pledged 20 million British pounds (about $27 million) to the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences (LIMS), in one of the largest private gifts to a UK research institution outside Oxford and Cambridge, Times Higher Education reported.
The donation consists of roughly $13.3 million upfront and a further $13.3 million conditional on LIMS matching the sum through additional fundraising. The gift launches a broader campaign to build an $80 million endowment intended to secure the institute’s long-term future.
“I would like to see LIMS winning Fields Medals and Nobel Prizes – they are already doing some world-class things and I want to help,” Delo told the magazine. He said he chose LIMS over a larger university because its model lets top researchers concentrate solely on research without teaching or administrative duties. Delo also praised LIMS’s innovative approaches, including offering coaching on research, and criticized what he described as the UK’s “lacklustre and inconsistent approach to scientific funding.”
Delo, who co-founded crypto exchange BitMEX in 2014, pleaded guilty in 2022 to US banking violations alongside his co-founders and paid a $10 million fine. He received a pardon from President Donald Trump in March 2025.
A LIMS trustee, Delo has previously supported causes including neurodiversity, academic freedom, and mathematical education and research. In 2025 he funded the creation of the Ben Delo Fellowship at the institute.
Founded in 2011 by physicist Thomas Fink, LIMS is based at the Royal Institution in rooms once used by chemist Michael Faraday. The institute focuses exclusively on research, offering three-year fellowships in theoretical physics, pure mathematics and artificial intelligence. In recent years it has supported exiled Russian and Ukrainian scientists and attracted researchers from the United States.
Cointelegraph contacted LIMS for comment but had not received a response by publication.
In related political-crypto developments, the chair of the UK’s national security committee recently called for an immediate temporary ban on political donations made in cryptocurrency, warning such contributions could enable foreign interference in British elections. The move followed Reform UK receiving a record $12 million donation last year from early crypto investor Christopher Harborne — the largest single political contribution ever made by a living individual in Britain.
This article was produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy; readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
