Philanthropist and entrepreneur Ben Delo has handed a £25m endowment to Sheila Coates Foundation, the charity he set up five years ago to improve education and mental health support for young people with autism across England.

The money will be used to expand the charity’s support in mainstream secondary schools and colleges, where it has already supported more than 25,000 young people in over 600 sites.

Fintech entrepreneur Delo was diagnosed with autism when he was a child and benefited from the work of the late Sheila Coates, who set up a service in Oxfordshire to help children in school.

“The support I received from Sheila Coates was genuinely transformative to my education and future outlook, he said.

“This Foundation, established in her memory, has had an incredible impact since its inception and I am looking forward to watching it grow from strength to strength in the coming years.’

He is the co-founder of BitMEX, the world’s first crypto-currency derivatives trading platform.

Foundation chief executive Stephen McShane said the endowment “secures our future and will enable us to continue transforming the educational experiences and lives of autistic students across the country”.

He added: “We are continually inspired by the teachers and schools we work with, and by the forward-thinking approaches we support to improve students’ experiences in mainstream education.

“We look forward to expanding our work with this generous support. Thanks to this endowment we can create lasting change for autistic young people now, and into the future.”

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