3 Donors Give $200 Million Apiece to Back AI Programs and Public Health

In May, three big donors stepped up to support health care, public health, and research with large gifts to hospitals in Jerusalem, Missouri, California, and elsewhere. And the sums were big — gifts totaling $675 million went to health care and public health.

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum gave $200 million through his Koum Family Foundation to back the design and construction of a 24-story tower and medical staff housing at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, a large teaching hospital in Jerusalem. Hospital officials plan to rename the medical center Koum Shaare Zedek Medical Center. A former Yahoo engineer, Koum’s now roughly $17 billion fortune resulted from his 2014 sale of WhatsApp to Facebook. He appeared on the Philanthropy 50 a year later when he poured nearly $556 million into a donor-advised fund.

Another $200 million health-related gift came from Greenwich, Conn., philanthropists Andrew and Jane Bursky. Their gift to Washington University in St. Louis, their alma mater, will support its newly named Andrew M. and Jane M. Bursky School of Public Health. The donation is a commitment the Burskys will pay over time through their Bursky Family Foundation. The money will go toward a range of efforts within the school, including hiring more faculty and supporting scholarships and research programs. Andrew Bursky co-founded Interlaken Capital, a private equity firm, and is managing partner of Atlas Holdings, an industrial holding company.

Tech investor and former Sequoia Capital partner Mark Stevens and his wife, Mary, gave $175 million to Sutter Health and Santa Clara University to establish the Mark & Mary Stevens School of Medicine, a new medical school in the Bay Area. The couple have appeared on the Chronicle’s Philanthropy 50 list of biggest donors twice over the years. Mark Stevens was an early investor in tech giants Google, Yahoo, YouTube, and Nvidia, among others. He is also a USC alumnus.

Herbert Wertheim gave $100 million to Baptist Healththrough his Dr. Herbert Wertheim Family Foundation to establish the Herbert Wertheim Cancer Institute Transformational Impact Fund aimed at advancing cancer prevention and patient care, research, and education programs. Wertheim is the founder and president of Brain Power, a manufacturer of eye-care instruments, and an ophthalmologist in Coral Gables, Fla.

Ken Hao and Kathy Chiao pledged $100 million to the University of California at San Francisco to support a range of efforts. The couple directed $50 million of the total to pay for construction projects and $10 million to the Weill Cancer Hub West, a research collaborative of the University of California at San Francisco and Stanford University. The remaining $40 million will support other UCSF programs. Hao is chairman and managing partner of Silver Lake, a Menlo Park, Calif., private equity firm focused on technology companies.

Big Gifts to Other Causes 

University of Southern California

Mark and Mary Stevens made the largest non-health-related gift in May. They gave $200 million to accelerate the university’s AI research and its effort to integrate AI and the arts, business, the health sciences, and security. The university has renamed its computing school the Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence as a result of the gift. 

Robin Hood Foundation

Miguel (Mike) Bezos and his family gave $125 million to establish the Jackie Bezos Endowment for Early Childhood, an early childhood development program, named for the late Jackie Bezos, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s mother and a prolific philanthropist. She served on the Robin Hood Foundation’s Board of Directors and died last year. Mike Bezos is Jeff Bezos’s father. The family’s pledge includes $25 million that will be used to match donations of up to $25 million from other donors. Mike and Jackie Bezos appeared on the Philanthropy 50 three times in recent years.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Ronald Baron gave $75 million through his Baron Family Foundation to support the performing arts center’s massive campus renovation and expansion project. A new amphitheater being built as part of the expansion effort will be named the Baron Theater. Baron is a billionaire financier who founded Baron Capital, a New York investment-management firm. He has hosted his company’s annual Baron Investment Conference at Lincoln Center since 2004.

To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.