WhatsApp co-founder and philanthropist Jan Koum has donated $200 million to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, marking the largest dollar donation in the history of Israel’s healthcare system, the hospital announced on Friday. The insitution will be renamed the Koum Shaare Zedek Medical Center in honor of the gift.

“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,” Koum said in a statement. 

The funds are earmarked for a massive expansion that is expected to triple the hospital’s physical footprint and patient capacity. This investment will support a new inpatient tower to significantly scale the current 1,000-bed capacity and provide on-site housing for medical staff — a major drawing point in light of Israel’s pricey real estate market. 

The donation will primarily go toward the construction of a new “medical tower for medical excellence in Jerusalem,” the hospital said, adding that the building will be the “largest and most advanced facility of its type anywhere in Israel.”

The 24-story building will encompass more than 1.5 million square feet, including new surgical and emergency care facilities. The hospital added that the building will be reinforced to protect it against threats, with “significant underground spaces and a helipad positioned on the building’s roof to enable direct helicopter access.”

The new tower, which is being designed by Mochly-Eldar Architects, with Margolin Bros. Engineering and Consulting as the project manager, is in the “advanced stages of planning,” the hospital said. The plan has already been approved by the Israeli government and the Jerusalem municipality. 

“This is truly a special moment in Shaare Zedek Medical Center’s 124-year-old history. This record donation by The Koum Family Foundation reflects remarkable confidence in our hospital, our staff, the city of Jerusalem, the nation of Israel and a heartfelt embrace of Zionism,” Shaare Zedek President Dr. Jonathan Halevy said in a statement. “I am sure that this investment in Israeli healthcare will continue to positively impact the Israeli and Jewish people for generations to come.”

Shaare Zedek director-general Dr. Ofer Merin added that the donation serves as a “mark of honor for every employee of our hospital.”

The donation followed months of discussions between the hospital and the U.S.-based foundation, spearheaded by — on the hospital’s side — Halevy and Merin, as well as Akiva Holzer, the medical center’s director of special projects, and Yana Kalika, president of The Koum Family Foundation.

This donation follows a $50 million gift by The Koum Family Foundation to Soroka Medical Center last year, after the complex sustained a direct hit from an Iranian ballistic missile in June 2025 that caused heavy damage to the hospital’s surgical wing and laboratories. 

The $200 million figure is a landmark sum, edging out the previous record $180 million donation by Shmuel and Anat Harlap last August to Rabin Medical Center outside Tel Aviv. However, in light of the shekel’s recent surge against the dollar, the Harlap donation may ultimately be worth more in the local currency. When it was made last August, the Harlap’s gift was worth NIS 599 million. Today, with the shekel trading at 2.9 to the dollar, the Koum gift is worth NIS 581 million.

The 2 1/2 years since the Oct. 7 terror attacks have seen a surge in major donations to Israeli institutions, particularly those connected to the medical field. Soon after the attacks, Canadian-Israeli philanthropist Sylvan Adams pledged $100 million to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and he followed that up last November with a $100 million to Soroka Medical Center. Last summer, Jon and Mindy Gray donated $125 million to Tel Aviv University’s medical school. And in July 2024, an anonymous American donor gifted $260 million to Bar-Ilan University. (The largest donation ever made to an Israeli institution was a $400 million endowment to Ben-Gurion University in 2016 by Dr. Howard and Lottie Marcus.)

In recent years, The Koum Family Foundation has quietly taken on a growing role in American Jewish philanthropy, supporting a wide array of initiatives in its local Bay Area Jewish community, throughout the United States and in Israel. Koum, who was born in Kyiv in what is now Ukraine, also supports a number of programs in the former Soviet Union.