WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum gives $200 million to Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek hospital

The Koum Family Foundation, established by WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum, announced on 8 May 2026 a gift of $200 million to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. Both the hospital and press reports described it as the largest donation ever made to an Israeli healthcare institution, overtaking the $180 million that Shmuel and Anat Harlap gave to Rabin Medical Center. It is also the largest single gift Koum has made to any cause. In recognition, the hospital will be renamed the Koum Shaare Zedek Medical Center.

The money will go towards a 24-storey hospital tower of more than 140,000 square metres, with new surgical and emergency facilities, about 800 additional beds, protected underground space, on-site housing for medical staff and a rooftop helipad. The hospital, which currently has around 1,000 beds, expects to build the tower over about six years. The full project is expected to cost around $750 million, with the remainder to come from the government and other donors. The plan already has approval from the government and the Jerusalem municipality.

Shaare Zedek's president, Prof. Jonathan Halevy, said the gift showed confidence in the hospital, its staff, Jerusalem and Israel, and director-general Prof. Ofer Merin called it one of the most important milestones in the hospital's history. Both called Koum the greatest philanthropist of the Jewish people in their generation.

Koum was born in 1976 into a Jewish family in Kyiv and emigrated to the United States as a teenager with his mother. He co-founded WhatsApp in 2009 and sold it to Facebook in 2014. Since then he has become one of the largest, if least publicised, donors to Jewish and Israeli causes, endowing Israel studies at Stanford, supporting Jewish programmes in the former Soviet Union, and in 2025 giving $50 million to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba after it was damaged in an Iranian missile strike.