BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo has pledged £20 million (about $27 million) to the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences (LIMS), one of the largest private donations to a UK research institution outside Oxford and Cambridge, Times Higher Education reported.
The commitment is structured as roughly $13.3 million delivered immediately and an additional $13.3 million contingent on LIMS raising a matching sum. The donation is intended to kick off a wider campaign to build an $80 million endowment to secure the institute’s long-term future.
Delo, a LIMS trustee, said he wants to help the institute reach world-class achievements — including Fields Medals and Nobel Prizes — and that he chose LIMS because its research-only model lets top scholars focus entirely on research rather than teaching or administration. He praised the institute’s experimental approaches, such as research coaching, and criticized what he called the UK’s uneven approach to science funding.
Delo co-founded the crypto exchange BitMEX in 2014. In 2022 he pleaded guilty to US banking violations alongside other founders and paid a $10 million fine; he later received a pardon from President Donald Trump in March 2025. He has previously funded initiatives related to neurodiversity, academic freedom, and mathematics education and research, and in 2025 helped establish the Ben Delo Fellowship at LIMS.
Founded in 2011 by physicist Thomas Fink, LIMS operates from rooms at the Royal Institution once used by Michael Faraday. The institute focuses exclusively on research and offers three-year fellowships in theoretical physics, pure mathematics and artificial intelligence. In recent years LIMS 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 a related political-crypto development, the chair of the UK’s national security committee has called for a temporary ban on political donations made in cryptocurrency, warning such contributions could enable foreign interference in British elections. The call followed a record $12 million donation last year to Reform UK from early crypto investor Christopher Harborne, described as the largest single political contribution ever made by a living individual in Britain.
Readers are encouraged to verify details independently in line with Cointelegraph’s editorial policy.