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Business

Ken Griffin gives record $3bn to Carnegie Mellon for new Miami campus

Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin has pledged $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University — the largest-ever individual gift in the history of higher education — including $2 billion to build a new campus in Miami.

By Priya Raman · · 2 min read

Portrait of Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin.
Photo: Paul Elledge, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder and CEO of Citadel, has pledged $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University — which the university described as the largest-ever gift by an individual in the history of higher education — including $2 billion to build a new campus in Miami.

The gift was announced on Wednesday by the university and Griffin. Of the total, $1 billion will support the university’s Pittsburgh campus: $500 million in flexible support for its highest priorities and a $500 million investment in its School of Computer Science, which will be renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin School of Computer Science. The remaining $2 billion will fund the launch of CMU Miami.

The new Miami campus will occupy more than 35 acres in the city’s Wynwood neighbourhood. Construction is slated to begin in 2027, with the first students enrolling in 2028, subject to regulatory approvals. At completion it is designed to support more than 3,500 undergraduate, master’s and PhD students, nearly 300 faculty members and over 600 staff.

“This is the largest single investment in higher education in the history of the United States,” Griffin told Reuters. “It is the investment in excellence.”

The Miami campus will organise learning and research around societal challenges — human health and biological discovery, national security and strategic capabilities, energy and climate resilience, and advanced manufacturing — rather than traditional academic majors, the university said. Griffin will also join Carnegie Mellon’s board of trustees.

Griffin, 57, founded Citadel in 1990 and Citadel Securities in 2002. The gift was announced a week after Nike co-founder Phil Knight donated $1 billion to start an engineering college at the University of Oregon, Reuters reported.

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