The Kühne Foundation runs projects in the fields of logistics, climate, medicine and culture. In 2026, the Foundation will provide funding of about CHF 65 million. The Foundation’s total budget, including (third-party) income, amounts to CHF 135 million.
Operational Foundation
The Kühne Foundation is an operational foundation that achieves its objectives not so much by providing funding to third parties, but primarily through its own projects and programs. The Foundation initiates, manages and implements these itself, acting in a proactive, entrepreneurial and decentralized manner.
The Foundation’s work is carried out mainly through its approximately 20 subsidiaries. Their management teams are expected to act independently and to generate their own income (e.g. third-party funding) within the scope of the Foundation’s purpose, in order to achieve their objectives more effectively.
58%
of which 11% is humanitarian logistics
Logistics
15%
Climate
7%
Culture
The Kühne Foundation is guided by the entrepreneurial principles of its founder and applies these to its work.
We take action ourselves – and assume responsibility
As an operational foundation, we use our resources proactively. Instead of distributing grant money, we develop our own solutions to societal challenges and implement them independently. This is exemplified by our Davos Medical Campus, where our own research advances precision medicine.
We strive for excellence and outstanding solutions
We concentrate on clearly defined thematic areas in which we aspire to achieve world-class performance. Thanks in part to its clear focus on logistics, our Kühne Logistics University has become one of the world’s leading business schools. And in the cultural sphere, we provide targeted support to highly prestigious festivals, opera houses, and concert halls.
We pay strict attention to efficiency
The central guiding principle in our projects is a focus on results and cost-effectiveness. Therefore, we concentrate on fields where the greatest possible impact can be achieved with a reasonable use of resources. And we work – like businesses – with clear goals, professional structures, and the ambition to achieve measurable impact. However, our mission is not to generate profits, but to strengthen the common good.
Our solutions have a global impact, not just a local one
We value scalability because our projects are designed to have a global impact. We work on globally relevant topics such as logistics, humanitarian aid, climate protection, and medicine, and involve partners to achieve economies of scale. Together with leading African universities, LEARN Logistics can thus contribute to widespread capacity building within the framework of development cooperation.
We bridge temporary market failures and provide start-up support
We act to close gaps. That’s why we operate in areas with innovation and scaling potential where politics or markets are not yet able or willing to act. For example, our allergy research in CK-CARE focuses on better understanding atopic dermatitis – a widespread disease that, despite hundreds of millions of sufferers, is still not sufficiently researched.
We adapt to change
Humanity faces constant challenges, to which the Kühne Foundation can and must adapt. We recently added climate change to our list of priorities and developed it into a key focus area for our foundation.
Our locations
Operating range
The Kühne Foundation owes its financial strength to the business successes of its founder. Thanks to its own assets, the profitability of Kühne Holding AG and its assets, the Kühne Foundation is able to act free from the influence of third parties.
The founder entire assets will eventually be transferred to the foundation. This paves the way for the Foundation’s future growth and gives it the opportunity to develop into one of the largest foundations in Europe in the coming years.