The co-founder of WhatsApp and a top Donald Trump supporter, Jan Koum, has just donated $250,000 to a political action committee helmed by allies of Mayor Daniel Lurie that is spending significantly on the mayor’s priorities this election cycle.
Koum has given millions of dollars to Republican candidates and in 2024 gave a little over $5 million to MAGA, Inc., a PAC for then-candidate Donald Trump; he gave another $1 million to MAGA, Inc. in 2025.
Koum made the recent quarter-million dollar donation on April 13 to “S.F. Believes,” a PAC supporting Lurie-backed measures and his allies on the Board of Supervisors; it has already spent $146,000 on District 4 supervisor Alan Wong’s election, and another $47,000 on District 2 supervisor Stephen Sherrill’s race.
Wong is a Lurie appointee. Both Wong and Sherrill are solid moderate votes on a board that is more closely aligned with the San Francisco mayor’s agenda than any in perhaps the past 25 years.
Lurie does not control the PAC, but it was created by two of his allies, Adam Clemmer and Alec Perkins. That duo also helmed the pro-Lurie PAC in 2024 that took in $1 million from the mayor’s mother. Koum in 2024 gave $500,000 to that PAC, and gave Lurie another $500 directly.
With Koum’s donation, the S.F. Believes PAC has amassed $1,077,000 from just 13 individuals, most of them investors and finance executives.
Koum is not the only billionaire bankrolling the mayor’s agenda: Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist and chairman of the San Francisco Standard, and cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen and his wife have collectively given $4.4 million to Lurie’s electoral efforts this year. The bulk of that is going toward an ambitious charter-reform effort to increase mayoral power.
Lurie’s office relayed questions to treasurers of the PAC, who declined to comment.