The co-founder of WhatsApp has donated a record-breaking £147m to a hospital in Israel – the largest-ever donation to the Israeli healthcare system.
Jan Koum, who sold the messaging platform in 2014 to Meta – then Facebook, for £14b, made the donation to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital – an independent medical centre which is not linked to any of Israel’s four main insurance providers, and therefore relies on philanthropy.
The hospital is set to spend the money on a planned 24-story building which will span some 1.5 million square feet and include new facilities for surgical and emergency care. The expansion will make the hospital one of Israel’s largest.
Koum, was born in Ukraine and has lived in the US since he was a teenager. He studied at Stanford and worked as a security consultant at Ernest And Young before launching WhatsApp in 2009.
After just six years, he sold the app for £14b. The sale of WhatsApp matches his estimated net worth of £14b.
Koum is well-known for being a massive donor to Israel through the Koum Family Foundation.
Over the years, the foundation has donated hundreds of millions of pounds to Israel as well as Jewish organisations and programs of study at Stanford University, Chabad, and Jewish groups in Ukraine.
The hospital will be renamed the Koum Shaare Zedek Medical Centre.
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