Checkout.com founder and tech billionaire Guillaume Pousaz has set up a new charitable foundation focused on education.
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Guillaume Posas, one of Europe’s wealthiest tech billionaires, founder of payments startup Checkout.com, has quietly set up a charitable foundation with his wife, Laure Posas.
Posas Philanthropies aims to support “quality and safe education” for children and has already partnered with education nonprofits such as Khan Academy and Global School Leaders, as well as the think tank Center for Global Development and former hedge fund billionaire Christopher Chandler. Has partnered with K Luminous Fund. According to its website, launched in September.
The foundation, which is based in the Channel Islands tax haven of Jersey, has named San Francisco-based Sameer Sampath as its executive director. Sampath previously co-founded Global School Leaders, which helps train teachers in Africa, Southeast Asia and Brazil.
Pausa’s Philanthropies also named Rebecca Goldman and Catherine Saint-Laurent as strategic advisors to the foundation. Goldman and Saint-Laurent co-founded the philanthropic advisory firm Aquora Partners in 2021, when Goldman served as interim CEO of Time’s Up and director of filmmaker JJ Abrams’ family foundation. Saint-Laurent was chief of staff to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and worked for Melinda-French Gates’ philanthropic investment firm Pivotal.
Just months after Checkout.com raised $230 million in January 2021, Dubai-based Pausaz registered the foundation with the Jersey Financial Services Commission in August 2021, one of Europe’s largest Series A rounds ever Is. After raising an additional $1 billion in January 2022, the company’s valuation increased to $40 billion. forbes It was estimated at the time that the Swiss payments entrepreneur held a two-thirds stake worth about $23 billion. In November 2022, Checkout reduced its internal valuation to just $11 billion, according to . financial Times, Pausa’s Philanthropies’ website was launched in late 2022.
Pausaz also created a family office, Xinal Growth, in May 2021 and hired former Coatue general partner Luca Schmid in January 2023 to lead its investments in fintech and crypto startups.
Checkout.com, whose parent company is also registered in Jersey, and Guillaume Pousaz declined to comment. Pousaz and Pousaz Philanthropies have not disclosed how much they have donated to the foundation.
Bill Gates and Melinda French-Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin have made the idea of tech billionaires starting family philanthropic foundations relatively common in Silicon Valley, but the idea has found less popularity in the UK and Europe. Because the UK does not offer charitable foundations the generous and flexible tax exemptions available in the United States, some entrepreneurs set them up in the country; Ecommerce billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen’s Bestseller Foundation, British inventor and billionaire James Dyson’s fund, and a handful of hedge fund billionaire’s private charities stand out as notable exceptions.
“More North American entrepreneurs than European entrepreneurs set up foundations, but many give to foundations directly, or through donor-advised funds, or through other types of vehicles that are their own legal entity.” behave like a foundation without the administrative or regulatory burden of keeping it,” says David Goldberg, co-founder and CEO of the not-for-profit Founders Pledge. “Unless someone is giving a large amount of money, don’t set up a foundation. It’s the right thing to do.”
