Boycat Founder Launches Foundation to Fund Ethical Technology and Public Infrastructure
A new UK charity, Shared Futures Foundation, has launched with a straightforward argument: the reason most people don't participate more ethically in the economy isn't apathy, it's that the systems around them were never designed to make it easy.
Founded by Adil Abbuthalha, an American entrepreneur and activist best known for building Boycat, an app that helps users make conscious purchasing decisions by identifying brands to boycott and suggesting ethical alternatives, Shared Futures Foundation describes its mandate as funding ethical technology, public-interest research, and infrastructure that provides alternatives to what it calls "extractive economic systems."
"Most people do not wake up wanting to contribute to exploitation, opacity, or harm," Abbuthalha says. "But neither were they given systems designed to make responsible participation simple."
The foundation's first public initiative is Buildathon London, a 24-hour event scheduled for June 7, 2026, organised in partnership with Muslim Tech Fest. The event will bring together 120 builders, designers, developers, researchers, and operators to work on products across four areas: media and information systems, commerce and everyday infrastructure, payment systems, and an open category for builder-led ideas.
Three winning teams will each receive £10,000 in non-dilutive funding, for a total grant pool of £30,000. That's followed by a 90-day incubation programme intended to help projects move from prototype to real-world deployment. The foundation says it will also facilitate angel syndicate consideration and community investment rounds for products that meet its standards.
Applications are open until May 23, 2026, extended by a week from the original deadline. Solo applicants are welcome; teams will be formed during onboarding. Launch partners for the event include Replit, Boycat, Ummah.com, and Muslim Tech Fest.
The foundation's framing is not just technological. Abbuthalha argues that economic systems shape culture over time, normalising certain tradeoffs and signalling what society deems worth pursuing, and that building better infrastructure is a more durable intervention than asking individuals to make better choices within broken systems.
"The burden of acting ethically was pushed onto individuals while the infrastructure around them rewarded convenience first and accountability much later, if at all," he says.
The foundation states that it operates across three key functions: researching sectors where ethical alternatives are structurally absent; funding builders and early-stage products; and supporting distribution through partnerships and incubation. It publishes its research and datasets openly.
Abbuthalha is candid about the moral tradition informing the work, describing a worldview that treats wealth as a trust and trade as an ethical act, while maintaining that the problems the foundation is addressing are universal. "The need for more transparent, more responsible, and more accountable economic systems is universal," he says.
The foundation, currently in the process of UK charity registration, plans to expand the programme internationally over the coming years.
Shared Futures Foundation: sharedfuturesfoundation.org.uk
Buildathon London 2026: sharedfuturesfoundation.org.uk/buildathon/london-2026
