Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel and his wife, Australian model Miranda Kerr, have erased $550 million in medical debt for more than 261,000 Californians through a partnership with a national nonprofit, the organization announced this week.

Undue Medical Debt, the Santa Monica-based nonprofit behind the gift, said the donation marks one of the largest single contributions of its kind to date, providing relief to families across the state at a moment when healthcare costs and broader affordability concerns continue to weigh heavily on households.

How the couple revealed the gift

Spiegel and Kerr announced the donation themselves in a video posted to Instagram on Saturday, choosing to make the gift public specifically so recipients wouldn’t mistake the upcoming notification letters for a scam. “Hey everybody, Evan and Miranda here,” Spiegel said at the start of the video. “And today we are so excited because we’re announcing a partnership with Undue Medical Debt to relieve over half a billion dollars of unpaid medical debt for more than 250,000 Californians.”

Kerr followed by explaining the reasoning behind going public with the donation rather than keeping it private. “If you happen to receive a letter in the mail letting you know that your medical debt has been forgiven, we want you to know, it’s real,” she said.

The couple also spoke to the personal motivation behind their decision to focus on medical debt specifically. “When someone you love is sick, all you want to do is focus on helping them get better,” Kerr said. “That’s why we wanted to support this effort and help relieve medical debt, so families can focus on caring for their loved ones and really supporting their healing.”

Spiegel echoed that sentiment, expressing hope that the gift would offer recipients more than just a financial reprieve. He said he hoped the donation gave families “a little peace of mind” and allowed them “to focus on what matters the most.”

How the relief actually works

Undue Medical Debt operates by purchasing qualifying medical debt in bulk directly from hospitals, physician groups and collection agencies, often for a fraction of its original value. According to the organization, every $10 donated translates into roughly $1,000 in medical debt relief for families in need, allowing relatively modest contributions to produce an outsized impact at scale.

Recipients of the relief don’t need to take any action to qualify. The debt is identified and canceled directly by the nonprofit based on income thresholds, with qualifying individuals earning at or below 400% of the federal poverty level, or carrying medical debt amounting to more than 5% of their annual income. Affected Californians are expected to begin receiving notification letters in the mail starting in mid-July.

The scale of impact across California

The donation’s reach extends across numerous counties throughout the state, with some regions benefiting more significantly than others. San Diego County is expected to see the largest impact, with the gift relieving approximately $99 million in debt for roughly 40,369 residents. Los Angeles County will also see a substantial benefit, with about 17,466 people set to have a combined $26.7 million in medical debt wiped away. Other counties included in the top 10 beneficiaries are Riverside, San Bernardino, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Monterey, San Francisco, Sonoma and Alameda.

A nonprofit leader’s reaction

Allison Sesso, president and CEO of Undue Medical Debt, characterized the donation as one of the most significant gifts the organization has received. “The scale of this gift to Californians is truly astonishing, unburdening over a quarter million families of over half a billion dollars of un-payable medical debt,” Sesso said in a statement. “In the U.S. 1 in 4 adults are in medical debt; it’s a growing crisis undermining healthcare access, economic wellbeing, and mental health. We’re so grateful that Evan Spiegel and Miranda Kerr share our belief that no one should go bankrupt because of a cancer diagnosis, and no family should have to choose between insulin and groceries.”

Sesso added that the organization’s technology-driven approach to acquiring and canceling debt at scale is designed to address one of the central barriers preventing people from seeking necessary medical care, regardless of where in the state they live. The nonprofit has said it has erased more than $40 billion in medical debt across all 50 states since its founding in 2014, working with nearly 30 government partners nationwide, including Los Angeles County.

A pattern of giving for the couple

The medical debt gift is not the first large-scale act of philanthropy from the pair. In 2022, Spiegel paid off student loans for the graduating class of Otis College of Art and Design. More recently, in January 2025, Spiegel — who grew up in Pacific Palisades and lost his childhood home in that month’s devastating Los Angeles County wildfires — personally donated $5 million in immediate aid through Snap and was among those who helped form a relief initiative known as the Department of Angels to assist wildfire survivors. At the time, Spiegel said California had given so much to him and his family, adding that he cares “deeply about the wellbeing of our communities.”

Backgrounds of the philanthropic couple

Spiegel co-founded Snapchat in 2011 alongside two of his Stanford University fraternity brothers, and the disappearing photo and video app’s rapid rise helped him become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at age 24 in 2015. His net worth currently stands at approximately $2.1 billion, according to Forbes.

Kerr, 43, built her career as one of the fashion industry’s most recognizable models, including a lengthy run as a Victoria’s Secret Angel, before founding skincare brand Kora Organics in 2009. The company now generates more than $23 million in annual revenue. The couple met at a Louis Vuitton dinner at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2014, married in 2017, and share three sons together: Hart, 8, Myles, 6, and Pierre, 4. Kerr also has a 15-year-old son, Flynn, from her previous marriage to actor Orlando Bloom.

Why medical debt remains a pressing issue

The donation arrives amid mounting national concern over medical debt, which health policy researchers have identified as the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Surveys have found that a majority of Californians worry about facing unexpected medical bills, with roughly 40% of the state’s population already carrying some form of medical debt. Advocates say gifts like Spiegel and Kerr’s, while substantial, represent one piece of a much larger affordability challenge facing households nationwide, even as they offer immediate, tangible relief to the families directly affected.