Ken Griffin’s $3 B Gift to Launch Carnegie Mellon’s Miami Campus

Billionaire hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin announced a $3 billion donation to fund a new Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) campus in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood. The gift is split evenly: $1 billion will support CMU’s existing Pittsburgh campus, while $2 billion will finance the Miami site, which is slated to open in 2028. The university says the campus will serve more than 3,500 undergraduate, master’s and PhD students and will organize learning around “societal challenges” rather than traditional majors, emphasizing human health, national security, energy and climate resilience, and advanced manufacturing. Construction is scheduled to begin next year.

CNN

Griffin’s donation follows a multi-year relocation of his firm, Citadel, from Chicago to Miami, completed in 2022. The hedge-fund billionaire, who attended high school in South Florida, has been redirecting resources away from New York after a public dispute with Mayor Zohran Mamdani over a proposed “pied-à-terre” tax targeting wealthy second-home owners, including Griffin’s $238 million penthouse. Griffin described the mayor’s video announcement as “creepy and weird” and said the conflict prompted a larger office-building plan for his Miami operations.

CNN

The School of Computer Science will be renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin School of Computer Science in recognition of the gift. The university frames the initiative as a response to the rise of artificial intelligence, which it says demands a rethinking of education, research and partnership structures.

CNN

CMU President Farnam Jahanian highlighted AI’s transformative impact on education and research, underscoring the university’s commitment to adapt to these changes.

CNN

• “Artificial intelligence represents one of the defining intellectual developments of our time, and it demands that we rethink how we educate students, conduct research and partner with others,” — CMU President Farnam Jahanian, said CMU president

CNN

• “We went to Miami and revised our building plan to make it a bigger office building,” — Ken Griffin, hedge fund manager

CNN