Ken Griffin Gives Record $3 Billion to Carnegie Mellon to Launch Miami Campus in Biggest College Gift Ever

Billionaire hedge fund founder Ken Griffin is giving $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University, the largest donation by an individual in the history of U.S. higher education, with most of the money going to build a new campus in Miami.

The university and the Citadel founder and CEO announced the gift Wednesday in a joint statement. Griffin will give $2 billion to launch Carnegie Mellon University Miami and $1 billion to the university's main campus in Pittsburgh.

The donation surpasses the $2 billion that Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, gave to Oregon Health & Science University's Knight Cancer Institute in 2025. Before that, the record for an individual gift to an educational institution was Michael Bloomberg's $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins University in 2018.

How the money will be spent

Of the $1 billion earmarked for Pittsburgh, half will provide flexible support for the university's top priorities, while $500 million will go to its highly ranked School of Computer Science. That school will be renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin School of Computer Science.

The remaining $2 billion will fund the Miami campus. Griffin will also join Carnegie Mellon's Board of Trustees.

"The opportunity to bring Carnegie Mellon to Miami places our city at the heart of humanistic and scientific advancement and amplifies the University's international reach and impact," Griffin said in a statement.

He added that the new campus would help launch new businesses, contribute to Miami's economy and community, and strengthen the nation's prosperity.

A new model for higher education

The Miami campus will span 35 acres in Wynwood, a neighborhood just north of downtown known for its art scene. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2027, with the university expecting to start enrolling students in 2028. Once complete, the campus is expected to serve more than 3,500 undergraduate, master's and doctoral students.

Carnegie Mellon says CMU Miami will break from the traditional university structure. The campus will organize learning and research around societal challenges rather than academic majors, according to the university. Examples cited include climate resilience and national security.

Carnegie Mellon President Farnam Jahanian framed the effort as a response to rapid technological change, particularly the rise of artificial intelligence, which he described as one of the defining intellectual developments of the era and one that requires rethinking how students are educated and how research is conducted.

"We are deeply grateful to Ken Griffin for his extraordinary vision, partnership and belief in what Carnegie Mellon can achieve," Jahanian said.

Griffin's growing bet on South Florida

The gift is the largest of Griffin's career and the latest move in a yearslong investment in South Florida. Griffin attended high school in the region and moved the headquarters of Citadel and his market-making firm, Citadel Securities, from Chicago to Miami in 2022.

Since relocating, Griffin has committed roughly $2.4 billion to causes in South Florida, including a charter school network, the University of Miami, Miami Dade College, public schools and math tutoring programs. Including the Carnegie Mellon gift, his total philanthropic giving has reached $5.7 billion.

Griffin has also been expanding his business footprint in the city. Earlier this year, he said he planned to shift more resources to Miami and away from New York following a public dispute with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani over a proposed wealth tax. Griffin said in May that his company had revised plans for its Miami headquarters to make the building larger.

Griffin, 57, has an estimated net worth of about $57.6 billion, according to Forbes.

Record follows break with Harvard

Before Wednesday's announcement, Griffin's largest donation was a $300 million gift to Harvard University, his alma mater, in 2023.

His relationship with elite universities has since grown more critical. In 2024, Griffin told CNBC he had paused donations to Harvard over the school's handling of antisemitism on campus, and he has publicly criticized the leadership of top colleges.

Carnegie Mellon already had growing ties to Florida before the gift was announced. Florida is a state where conservatives have expanded their influence over higher education in recent years.

A crowded market

The new campus will enter a competitive higher education landscape. The University of Miami, Florida International University and Miami Dade College together enroll about 135,000 students.

Carnegie Mellon, a private research university founded in Pittsburgh, is widely known for its programs in computer science, engineering, robotics and the arts. The university traces its roots to steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, whose $1 million gift founded the Carnegie Technical Schools in 1900.

The donation arrives as higher education faces pressure on several fronts, including federal funding cuts, political scrutiny and questions about the value of a college degree. Supporters of the gift say it signals continued confidence among major donors in research universities, particularly those focused on technology and innovation.

Carnegie Mellon has not yet released a detailed academic plan for the Miami campus, but university officials said the program will emphasize interdisciplinary work tied to real-world problems. Construction is expected to start next year, and the first students are scheduled to arrive in 2028.

With the gift, Griffin joins the ranks of the largest donors to American higher education. He ranked 20th on Forbes' 2026 list of America's top philanthropists, with lifetime giving of $2.5 billion at the time the list was published, a figure that has now more than doubled.