Phil and Penny Knight will give Providence Health & Services $1.1 billion to build what the health system calls Oregon's first hospital dedicated to women's health.
The gift, announced Tuesday, Sept. 15, will fund a new tower connected to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Washington County. It is the Nike co-founder and his wife's largest donation to Providence yet, The Oregonian first reported.
The pledge will be distributed over 10 years, with the first funds arriving in 2026, according to OPB. Providence said the gift also will pay for expanded cardiac imaging, clinical trials and physician recruitment at Providence Heart Institute, which shares the St. Vincent campus.
Providence plans roughly 80 to 100 beds in the new building, though the final count and mix of services had not been decided as of Sept. 15. The tower will house maternity, gynecology, menopause and other specialty care.
The neonatal intensive care unit will feature private rooms for families, replacing an older shared-room layout with a row of specialized incubators called isolettes. St. Vincent already delivers about one in every seven babies born in Oregon, more than any other facility in the state, according to Providence.
"It felt like a dream," said Dr. Ray Moreno, chief executive of Providence St. Vincent, who told The Oregonian the hospital had envisioned a new maternity and neonatal tower for years but lacked the money.
Moreno said St. Vincent is not necessarily seeing more maternity patients as Oregon's birth rate declines. But pregnancies are growing more complicated as patients are older and more often have conditions such as hypertension and diabetes.
The expanded NICU will not offer the highest level of newborn care. Babies who need the most specialized services will still transfer to OHSU or Legacy Randall Children's Hospital. Meanwhile, OHSU has paused a roughly $425 million project to replace its own crowded NICU, citing a lack of funding.
No opening date has been set.
Knight giving tops $3 billion
The gift brings the Knight family's total pledges to Providence to an estimated $1.3 billion. In February, the Knights gave a second $75 million gift to St. Vincent for cardiac care. Over the past decade, they contributed $200 million to Providence Heart Institute, helping establish a heart transplant program that now treats about 63,000 patients across the Northwest.
In August 2025, the couple pledged $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University's Knight Cancer Institute. Combined, the OHSU and Providence commitments top $3 billion for two of Oregon's largest healthcare institutions in roughly 14 months.
CNBC reported the gift is one of the largest donations to a healthcare institution in American history, citing a Providence press release. Forbes estimates the Knight family is worth $25.5 billion and has given $4.5 billion to charity, figures that predate the Sept. 15 announcement.
Providence's financial backdrop
Providence is the Portland region's second-largest employer, with about 19,221 workers, according to Greater Portland Inc. In 2025, the health system posted a $486 million operating loss on $29.5 billion in revenue and announced it would wind down its insurance division, Providence Health Plan, beginning in 2027. That move affects 440,000 members and 1,150 employees.
Last year, Providence closed St. Vincent's four-bed pediatric intensive care unit, citing low demand, and ended labor and delivery services at its Seaside hospital, citing rising costs, staffing shortages and declining births.
No construction timeline, groundbreaking date or design review schedule has been announced for the new tower.
