PITTSBURGH — Carnegie Mellon University will open an innovative campus in Miami after a $3 billion donation from hedge fund CEO Kenneth Griffin, whose nationally historic gift will also aim to bolster CMU’s flagship Pittsburgh campus.

The gift from Griffin — the founder of Citadel whose nearly $50 billion net worth makes him the 37th richest person in the world — is the largest individual donation in higher education history.

Two-thirds of the gift, announced Wednesday morning, will go toward the Miami campus. Slated to open in just two years, the campus will pioneer a new higher education model that is centered around societal challenges rather than academic majors.

The remaining $1 billion will support the Pittsburgh campus, and will include a $500 million investment in the School of Computer Science, which will now bear Griffin’s name. That money will also be used to recruit talent to the Pittsburgh campus, expand access and affordability for students, and invest in research.

Griffin, a Florida native who earned his bachelor’s degree at Harvard University, said it was CMU’s rigorous education, commitment to meritocracy and world-class offerings that prompted his gift. Carnegie Mellon is one of the country’s “crown jewels,” he told the Post-Gazette in an exclusive interview on Tuesday.

“I hope that Carnegie Mellon in Miami will have an impact comparable to the tremendous impact that CMU has in Pittsburgh,” Griffin said. “I love [the university’s] focus on addressing the opportunities that matter to America. It's really refreshing to see that laser-like focus on, ‘Are we educating the young men and women of this country to really seize the opportunities that we have ahead of us as a nation?’”

CMU President Farnam Jahanian sees Pittsburgh and Miami as similar cities, making this move into the coastal city a good fit. Both are “American success stories” that share a “spirit of determination,” Jahanian told the Post-Gazette.

“Our impact in our community and our invention ecosystem is undeniable. We're thinking about … having that same kind of an impact on the Miami community as we share this passion for hard work [and] for bringing technology and science to improve lives, to support our national security [and] to help our economic development,” Jahanian said.

The 35-acre campus will take root in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, a lively arts and entertainment district known for its colorful murals and bustling nightlife. CMU will be the neighborhood’s first college campus.

The campus’s degrees and curriculum will be structured around “grand challenges areas” rather than traditional academic majors and departments. These areas will include: human health and biological discovery; national security and strategic capabilities; energy and climate resilience; and advanced manufacturing and industrial transformation.

This unorthodox organization is a first for a college campus, Jahanian said. He envisions this model could influence CMU’s Pittsburgh campus and other colleges across the country as advances in artificial intelligence and technology usher in changes to the economy, national security and education.

“We believe that this is a consequential moment for higher education in America,” the president said. “This is a time to think about what higher education is going to look like.”

David Coulter, chairman of CMU’s Board of Trustees, similarly stressed this. “We’re positioning ourselves here, with all these resources dedicated to great challenges, to have a real impact. We will have the resources to really address some of these major questions,” Coulter said in a statement.

Construction is slated to begin next year. It’s unclear how many buildings the campus will have. The university is exploring the potential use of some existing buildings in the area as part of campus in addition to new buildings.

School leaders hope to begin enrolling students at the new campus in 2028, pending regulatory approvals. Enrollment will begin with graduate students and expand to undergraduates after a few years, Jahanian said.

When complete, the campus will enroll 3,500-4,000 undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students, and employ about 300 faculty and 600 staff members, according to school officials.

Griffin envisions his investment will create “one of greatest universities in the country” smack-dab in Miami, where Citadel has been headquartered since 2022. Miami is the “nexus of the Western Hemisphere,” he said.

The Wynwood neighborhood is especially suitable for the campus because of its youthful population and proximity to Miami’s business community, Griffin said.

“This will anchor a revolution in the number of start-ups and the number of tech and other companies that will call Miami home,” Griffin said. “That's of profound importance for the city of Miami and the people of Miami, because it will put Miami on the frontier of where high-paying jobs are being created in America, and where the innovations and developments…that will improve the quality of life of all Americans will happen.”

Talks of the donation and new campus began about two years ago. Griffin will join the CMU Board of Trustees following this gift.

The Miami campus is the university’s third domestic campus and its sixth location globally, where it has a presence in Portugal, Qatar and Rwanda.

This gift marks the largest individual donation in higher education history, surpassing Phil and Penny Knight’s $2 billion gift to the Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute in 2025, and Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins University in 2018.

It’s more than 11 times larger than CMU’s now-second-largest individual gift, a $265 million donation from trustee and philanthropist William S. Dietrich II in 2011.

It’s also nearly as large as CMU’s endowment, which had a market value of $3.5 billion last fiscal year.

The investment “recognizes Pittsburgh leadership,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a statement.

Sen. Dave McCormick — who received financial support from Griffin in his 2024 Senate race — similarly stressed its significance.

“[Carnegie Mellon] is already one of the finest research institutions in the world ... And now, thanks to the university’s leadership, and to the incredible generosity of Ken Griffin, Carnegie Mellon University will be redefining higher education yet again,” McCormick said in a statement.

Griffin began investing in 1986 from his Harvard dorm room. He founded Citadel in 1990, a year after he earned his bachelor’s degree in economics. The hedge fund company has since ballooned to more than $77 billion in assets under management and 3,100 employees.

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