WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum donated $200 million to Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek hospital, tripling its size with a 24-story surgical and emergency tower

Jan Koum grew up in Mountain View, California, on welfare and he just wrote the biggest check in Israeli healthcare history.

WhatsApp co-founder has donated $200 million to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem through the Koum Family Foundation, a gift that will help build a new 24-story tower and double the hospital’s current capacity of around 1,000 beds. The institution will officially be renamed Koum Shaare Zedek Medical Center.

In a statement given to eJewishPhilanthropy, Koum said, “We are proud to partner with Shaare Zedek Medical Center, an institution that defines medical excellence in Jerusalem and beyond. This gift reflects our confidence in a future of medical innovation and research that will benefit patients in Israel and around the world.”


A story that sounds like it was made for Hollywood
The story of Koum’s life reads like a movie. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1976, he moved to Mountain View, California, with his mother at age 16. When his mother was diagnosed with cancer, the family lived on her disability income, relying on government assistance and food stamps. He learned programming on his own, worked at Yahoo, then co-founded WhatsApp in 2009.

Five years later, the app was acquired by Facebook for $19 billion. In what has since become Silicon Valley legend, Koum signed the acquisition papers on the doorstep of the very welfare office where he once stood in line with his mother. It was more than just a business deal. It was like a full circle.

What $200 million actually builds
The new 24-story tower will cover over 1.5 million square feet and will house expanded surgical and emergency care facilities, protected underground spaces and a rooftop helipad, the Jerusalem Post reported. The tower will also include medical staff, a pragmatic but often ignored requirement in a city where housing costs are a real hurdle in attracting top talent.

The donation eclipses the previous record gift to Israel’s healthcare sector, a $180 million contribution in 2025 by Anat and Shmuel Harlap to Rabin Medical Center. Shaare Zedek, founded in 1902, is not one of Israel’s national health funds and thus is heavily dependent on private philanthropy for expansion. That’s what makes a gift of this size so transformational.

It's part of a much bigger American giving trend
Koum’s gift is not happening in a vacuum. American donors have become a major force in funding for Israeli healthcare and nonprofits. Researchers at NYU and Tel Aviv University studied US philanthropy from 2015 to 2021 and found that American support for Israeli nonprofits has steadily increased, especially in the areas of health, aged care and poverty. American donors accounted for up to 75% of all international philanthropic funding and 45% of total funding of the Israeli nonprofit sector in 2021.

Private capital, much of it from American Jewish donors, is increasingly stepping in to fund hospital infrastructure that the state has not expanded at a similar rate.

Why it matters beyond the dollars
There's something worth sitting with here for US millennials who grew up watching Big Tech create some of the most jaw-dropping wealth in history. The man behind a free messaging app used by billions every day grew up on government assistance, made it big in Silicon Valley, and is now remaking a hospital in one of the world’s oldest cities.

In recent years, Koum’s Palo Alto-based foundation has quietly become a big player in American Jewish philanthropy. This donation to Shaare Zedek comes on the heels of a $50 million gift last year to Soroka Medical Center after the hospital was damaged by an Iranian ballistic missile attack in June 2025.

From needing public assistance to survive to bolstering the public health infrastructure for millions. This isn’t a warm and fuzzy headline; it’s a reminder of what putting wealth back into the world actually looks like.