{"id":414939,"date":"2026-09-30T19:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T19:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/414939\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T19:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T19:04:09","slug":"who-is-ken-griffin-citadel-ceo-donating-to-carnegie-mellon-university-nbc-6-south-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/414939\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Ken Griffin? Citadel CEO donating to Carnegie Mellon University \u2013 NBC 6 South Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carnegie Mellon University announced Wednesday that hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin is donating $3 billion<\/a>, with the bulk of the money for a new campus in Miami focused on societal challenges.<\/p>\n

The Pittsburgh-based private research university said the gift is the largest ever single gift to a U.S. university. <\/p>\n

Griffin\u2019s gift includes $2 billion to build a new 35-acre campus in Miami\u2019s Wynwood neighborhood, just north of downtown. The campus is expected to enroll around 3,500 undergraduate, master\u2019s and doctoral students. Construction is scheduled to begin next year.<\/p>\n

Who is Ken Griffin?<\/p>\n

Griffin, a GOP megadonor who founded the Citadel investment firm, owns a waterfront home in Miami, which is part of a growing metropolitan area whose population tops 6.4 million.<\/p>\n

In 2024, he was the featured speaker at a meeting of the Miami-Dade League of Cities. At the time, Griffin told the gathering about his childhood living in Boca Raton<\/a>, saying, \u201cAnd it\u2019s taken me a long time, but I finally ended up in the right part of Florida down here in Miami!\u201d <\/p>\n

Griffin also said his public school education at Boca Raton High School prepared him well for college at Harvard. He spent years in Chicago building his firm before moving Citadel to South Florida in 2022, and he is bullish on Miami.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRecent Miami transplant Ken Griffin, founder of the Citadel hedge fund, was the featured speaker at Monday’s meeting of the Miami-Dade League of Cities. NBC6’s Ari Odzer reports\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cThe quality of life here is extraordinary, great restaurants, we have a vibrant cultural scene,\u201d Griffin said, praising Miami\u2019s diversity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The area already is home to the University of Miami, a private research university; Florida International University, a public research university; and Miami Dade College, which started out as a community college but also offers some four-year degrees. Combined, enrollment at the three schools totals around 135,000. Several smaller private colleges are also based in the area.<\/p>\n

Griffin has donated over the years to causes such as medical research, charter schools and other universities through his charitable organization Griffin Catalyst.<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2023, he donated $25 million to Miami’s Nicklaus Children’s Hospital,<\/a> one of the largest single donations in its 72-year history. And the next year, he donated $50 million to fund the expansion of Baptist Health Miami Neuroscience Institute<\/a> and another $50 million to the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center<\/a> at the University of Miami. <\/p>\n

But Griffin saw room for something new.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe opportunity to bring Carnegie Mellon to Miami places our city at the heart of humanistic and scientific advancement and amplifies the University\u2019s international reach and impact,\u201d said Griffin, who is joining Carnegie Mellon\u2019s Board of Trustees, in a news release.<\/p>\n

Even before the announcement, Carnegie Mellon had growing ties to Florida, a state where conservatives have increased their influence on higher education.<\/p>\n

Its computer science department runs a program designed to teach middle school students in Florida and several other states about AI. The university also is involved in a partnership with the Gates Foundation to deploy AI-powered course materials for introductory math classes at Miami Dade College.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carnegie Mellon University announced Wednesday that hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin is donating $3 billion, with the bulk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[149357,225,227,226,123],"class_list":["post-414939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-colleges-universities","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news","tag-miami"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}