Ken Griffin gives more than US$3 billion to Carnegie Mellon for Miami campus
Ken Griffin has given more than US$3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The university announced the gift on 30 September 2026. It described the donation as more than US$3 billion Carnegie Mellon University. The gift has been described as the largest gift in higher education ARTnews.
Most of the money is for a new campus in Florida. About US$2 billion will go to building Carnegie Mellon University Miami Bloomberg.
The new campus will be in Wynwood, a district of Miami known for galleries, murals and converted warehouses. That location puts the university in one of the city's busiest creative and commercial areas.
Miami will not be a copy of Pittsburgh. The university said the campus will organise research and learning around major problems facing society from the start, rather than beginning with conventional academic departments.
The gift is also meant to lift the home campus. Carnegie Mellon said part of the donation is intended to further elevate the university in Pittsburgh, where it was founded in 1900.
A separate US$500 million gift for the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon was also announced on 30 September 2026. That school, based in Pittsburgh, is one of the university's best-known departments.
Griffin is the founder and chief executive of Citadel, the US investment firm. He is also known as an art collector and philanthropist, with past donations to museums, universities and public institutions.
What makes this stand out is the scale and the split purpose. One donation backs an established campus in Pennsylvania and pays to build a new one in Florida, linking computer science, research and a fast-growing city.
