The Media Line: WhatsApp Co-Founder Jan Koum Gives $200 Million to Jerusalem Hospital in Record Israeli Healthcare Donation  

WhatsApp Co-Founder Jan Koum Gives $200 Million to Jerusalem Hospital in Record Israeli Healthcare Donation  

By The Media Line Staff  

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum has donated $200 million to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital–the largest donation ever made to Israel’s healthcare system.  

As part of the expansion project, the hospital will be officially renamed the Koum Shaare Zedek Medical Center. The funding is designated for the construction of a new inpatient tower and a residential building for medical staff, a project expected to triple the hospital’s operational scale and patient capacity.  

The planned 24-story building will span more than 1.5 million square feet and include new surgical and emergency care facilities. Shaare Zedek currently operates about 1,000 inpatient beds, and the expansion is expected to make it one of Israel’s largest and most advanced medical centers.  

Shaare Zedek functions as an independent medical center and is not affiliated with one of Israel’s major health funds, making it reliant on external donations for growth and the acquisition of new medical technologies.  

Koum was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, to a Jewish family and immigrated to the United States as a teenager along with his mother and grandmother. He attended university while working as a security researcher at Ernst & Young before leaving for a position at Yahoo. He later departed Yahoo to establish WhatsApp in 2009.Koum oversaw the sale of WhatsApp to Meta in 2014 in a deal valued at $19 billion.  

In recent years, Koum has emerged as a major pro-Israel philanthropist through the Koum Family Foundation. The foundation has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Israeli and Jewish organizations, including Israel studies programs at Stanford University, the AIPAC lobby, Chabad, Jewish organizations in Ukraine, and nonprofits involved in purchasing land in eastern Jerusalem.  

Forbes estimated Koum’s net worth at $15.2 billion in 2023, placing him among the wealthiest individuals in the world.