Jan Koum
Jan Koum the man who brought the world WhatsApp, has made a record setting $2 million donation to the America Israel Public Affairs Committee – AIPAC. Specifically, the money was donated to AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project. Previously, the largest donation that this super PAC received was $1 million.
The funds donated by Jan Koum are will be used to help pro-Israel Democratic political candidates in the various primary races in which they are running.
United Democracy Project calls itself an organization comprised of American citizens—Democrats, Republicans and Independents—united in the belief that America’s partnership with “our democratic ally Israel benefits both countries.” United Democracy Project works to help elect candidates that share our vision and will be strong supporters of the U.S.-Israel relationship in Congress.
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News of the donation comes just a month after it was revealed that Jan Koum also donated big money to Jewish relief efforts for refugees from Ukraine and to other Jewish causes. Jan Koum’s foundation donated $17 million to the European Jewish Association in recent years. And that organization has in turn used some of those funds for relief efforts related to the crisis in Ukraine. Koum also reportedly gave $10.6 million to the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS. (CIS refers to the commonwealth of independent states which is what the former republics of the Soviet Union first called themselves in the years after it fell).
Jan Koum, a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine, was once reduced to relying on welfare. As a teen, his family lived on food stamps. He was born in Kyiv in 1976, Koum got his start in high tech working at Ernst & Young and later went over to work for Yahoo. He applied to work at Facebook in its early days, but was rejected. And then when the iPhones started rolling out he realized the potential for apps. Koum created a new messaging app, WhatsApp, and the rest is history.
In 2014 he got $9 billion in the deal when Facebook took over WhatsApp for $22 billion in cash and stock. And since then Jan Koum has put that money to good use. He now controls a multi-billion-dollar charitable foundation.
AIPAC declares that its mission is to encourage and persuade the U.S. government to enact specific policies that create a strong, enduring and mutually beneficial relationship with our ally Israel. Through AIPAC, more than one million pro-Israel Americans work to advance pro-Israel policies and support a strong U.S.-Israel relationship.
