Gov Fatso chased the largest donor in US history out of Illinois?

Prior to his leaving Illinois citing terrible governance and high taxes as reasons, Griffen was the largest philanthropic donor in our state's history. Well played.

Ken Griffin Is Making the Largest Donation to Higher Education in U.S. History

Citadel CEO’s gift will launch a Carnegie Mellon University campus in Miami

By Deborah Acosta, WSJ

Updated Sept. 30, 2026 7:25 am ET

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin is donating $2 billion to launch a Carnegie Mellon University campus in Miami focused on technology and innovation.

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MIAMI—Hedge-fund titan Ken Griffin is donating $2 billion to start a Carnegie Mellon University campus in Miami, part of the largest-ever individual gift toward higher education.

The Pittsburgh-based university, known for its expertise in computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics, will open a 35-acre campus in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood that will focus on technology and innovation.

“The students who graduate and the tech companies that come to Miami to leverage those skills will change the very fabric of Miami for decades if not centuries to come,” Griffin said in an interview.

Citadel’s chief executive is also giving $1 billion to Carnegie Mellon’s main Pittsburgh campus. Griffin’s combined $3 billion donation is the largest single gift toward higher education from any individual, according to an announcement from Carnegie Mellon University.

The donation helps advance Griffin’s aim to establish South Florida as a leading global-business and technology hub. A spokesman said Griffin has now given $2.4 billion in donations to South Florida, where he moved his firm Citadel’s headquarters, and more than $5.7 billion in total charitable giving.

“I believe that all great American cities are anchored by great universities and Carnegie Mellon will bring a great university here to Miami complementary to other universities here in the region,” Griffin said.

In addition to the donation, Griffin is joining Carnegie Mellon’s Board of Trustees. CMU’s computer science building in Pittsburgh will also be renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin School of Computer Science.

Citadel has a history of scooping up talent from Carnegie Mellon, boasting a long list of quantitative engineers and other employees who attended the university.

Property developer Stephen Ross has also poured billions of dollars into office towers, condominiums, retail centers and schools in West Palm Beach, Fla., about 70 miles north of Miami. He also helped recruit Vanderbilt University’s graduate campus to West Palm Beach. That program has raised about $400 million from donations. It recently doubled its planned student population to 2,000, and the school will focus on defense tech, finance, space tech and national-security studies when it opens in 2029.

While Carnegie Mellon operates satellite campuses in New York City; Mountain View, Calif.; and Qatar, serving up to a few hundred students each, Miami will be its largest expansion by far. The university projects the campus eventually will support more than 3,500 undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. students, nearly 300 faculty and over 600 staff members.

“Miami is an area in which Carnegie Mellon can reinvent not only what students learn, but how they learn,” said Farnam Jahanian, president of Carnegie Mellon.

Carnegie Mellon Miami will focus on human health and biological discovery, national security and strategic capabilities, energy and climate resilience, and advanced manufacturing and industrial transformation, making it a good fit with the region’s burgeoning defense tech and healthcare industries. Interdisciplinary programs will integrate artificial intelligence, computing, and machine learning alongside CMU’s humanities, fine arts and design disciplines.

Carnegie Mellon’s new Miami campus will sit on a roughly 30-acre site purchased from developer Moishe Mana for $1.1 billion, according to a press release. Details about who ultimately will hold the deed to the 35-acre property weren’t made public.

Construction is slated to begin in 2027, with the campus aiming to enroll its first students in 2028.

The Miami campus will host industry research labs and venture studios, so that students, faculty and industry and community partners can build technologies alongside one another.

When the original university was founded by Andrew Carnegie, the aim was to create a hands-on environment for students to apply their knowledge to industrial challenges and real-world problem solving.

The new Carnegie Mellon campus will sit blocks from Griffin’s other major investment in the neighborhood, where he joined with Goldman Properties to acquire an office tower from Chicago-based developer Sterling Bay, for $180 million.

That building boasts a heavy financial, tech and arts presence, serving as home to MIAX Sapphire’s 38,400 square-foot options trading floor, alongside tenants like PwC, Gensler and Sony Music.

The trading floor opened in September last year, the first national securities exchange trading floor in Miami. It is the second open-outcry trading floor to open in the U.S. in roughly half a century—a physical trading floor, where pit traders cry out to each other verbally or using hand signals, versus a purely algorithmic data center with quant engineers watching the ledger remotely. Citadel Securities itself is one of the market-makers participating on that trading floor.

“The thinking is so big, matched with a financial commitment of historic proportions, you just know that the scale of the outcome will be breathtaking,” said Jessica Goldman Srebnick, the co-chair of Goldman Properties, a pioneer developer in the neighborhood.