Founders of RELEX Solutions Establish a €100M Charity Foundation to Battle Climate Change and Reduce Inequality

The new foundation will donate millions of euros to battle climate change and reduce inequality and poverty in its first years of operation. 

Michael Falck, Mikko Kärkkäinen, and Johanna Småros, the three co-founders of Finnish tech unicorn RELEX Solutions, together with one of the first employees at RELEX, Marko Nikula, announced a new charity foundation going by the name RELEX Foundation for a Better Future.

The new foundation has received a cash injection of €10M and almost €100M worth of RELEX Solutions’ stocks from the founders. “It’s important for us to reinvest RELEX Solutions’ success into causes that accelerate positive impact in the world. RELEX Foundation is on a mission to help build societies where people want to live their lives. We support and advance initiatives that preserve the environment, mitigate climate change, and drive more equal societies,” says RELEX Foundation’s chairman of the board, Marko Nikula.  

The foundation will fund organizations and initiatives battling some of the world’s biggest problems. Between 2023–2025, the foundation’s strategic emphasis will be mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss, reducing inequality and poverty, and supporting early intervention to reduce young people’s risk of marginalization.  

The foundation aims to have a significant impact as it provides funds to different stakeholders, including charitable and non-profit organizations, foundations, and research organizations. Annual impact assessments will be conducted to measure the success of the initiatives’ strategic goals. The foundation will act as an independent organization. Besides its name, RELEX Foundation is independent of RELEX Solutions. 

RELEX Solutions is a fast-growing tech unicorn that, in 2022, announced raising a record amount of funding in Finland – €500M – for its AI-driven, cloud-based supply chain and retail planning platform. “RELEX Solutions and its success has enabled us to establish this foundation. We wanted to keep RELEX in the foundation name to honor the work of our previous, current, and future RELEX Solutions employees,” says Nikula.

For more information, please go to https://www.relexfoundation.org/