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Ken Griffin doubles down on Florida with record $3B Carnegie Mellon gift
Confirmed
In Short: Billionaire Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel, has donated $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University to expand its Pittsburgh campus and build a new campus in Miami.
Carnegie Mellon University announced Wednesday that Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel, has donated $3 billion to the institution, marking the largest individual gift ever made to a higher education institution.
Of the $3 billion, $1 billion will support Carnegie Mellon's Pittsburgh campus, with $500 million allocated to the School of Computer Science, which will be renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin School of Computer Science.
The remaining $2 billion will fund the creation of Carnegie Mellon University Miami, a new 35-acre campus in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood, set to begin enrolling students in 2028.
Griffin, a Florida native who moved his family and Citadel headquarters to Miami in 2022, said, 'What we’re about to embark on in Miami will create one of the great stories in higher education of our lifetime.
Carnegie Mellon President Farnam Jahanian expressed gratitude, stating, 'We are deeply grateful to Ken Griffin for his extraordinary vision, partnership and belief in what Carnegie Mellon can achieve.
Griffin's decision to invest in Miami reflects his belief in the city's potential for innovation and job creation, as well as his personal optimism about the city's future.
Griffin emphasized the importance of education, saying, 'The belief in the family was always that education was the road to prosperity.
Griffin's move to Miami was driven by a desire for a state that embraces business, and he has increasingly shifted his business interests to South Florida.
The donation underscores Griffin's commitment to supporting institutions of excellence and setting a higher bar for other educational institutions across the nation and around the world.
What this adds
The donation is the largest philanthropic contribution of Griffin's career and surpasses Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins University in 2018.
What's confirmed
- "We are deeply grateful to Ken Griffin for his extraordinary vision, partnership and belief in what Carnegie Mellon can achieve," Carnegie Mellon University President Farnam Jahanian said in a statement.
What's still developing
- “The best thing I ever did was move to Miami for my kids,” Griffin told Fortune senior editor-at-large Shawn Tully in an interview earlier this year.
- “Great American cities are anchored by great universities, with almost no exception,” Griffin told the Financial Times.
- CMU says this is the largest gift by an individual ever given to a higher education institution, while Nike cofounder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, just committed $1 billion to the University of Oregon and many others have made $100 million–plus gifts to other schools recently.
- Griffin, a Florida native who grew up in Boca Raton, moved his family and the headquarters of both Citadel and Citadel Securities to Miami in 2022 after more than three decades in Chicago, where he’d grown increasingly vocal about crime.
- He also said of the city, “[There’s an] optimism in the air here.” Education is personally important to Griffin, too.
- The remaining $500 million will provide "flexible" funding for the university's "highest priorities," according to Carnegie Mellon.
- Griffin, whose philanthropy has focused on education, expanding opportunity and health sciences initiatives, will also join Carnegie Mellon's Board of Trustees, according to the announcement.
- In a letter to employees at the time, Griffin said that he viewed Florida as a better corporate environment.
- Earlier this year, Griffin said he planned to expand his business further in Miami, redirecting resources away from his New York offices after a high-profile spat with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani over a wealth tax.
- “We went to Miami and revised our building plan to make it a bigger office building,” Griffin said in May.
- “We need more innovation, we need more job creation, we need more in areas in which American firms have a competitive advantage compared with companies around the world,” Griffin told Reuters.
- Griffin is donating $3 billion to the institution, describing it as the “largest single investment in higher education in the history of the United States.” The donation will primarily be directed toward building a new campus in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, expected to open for graduate students in 2028 and accept undergraduates four years later.