Ken Griffin Makes Historic Donation To Build Carnegie Mellon Campus in Miami Where He Is Expanding His Property Portfolio

If there was any doubt that Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of hedge fund Citadel, was committed to building a new life in Miami, his latest megadonation should settle it.

Griffin just announced a $3 billion donation to his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon, the largest individual gift in higher education history. It includes $1 billion investment in its Pittsburgh Campus, as well as a $2 billion gift which will launch CMU Miami. The 35-acre campus in the city's Wynwood neighborhood will start enrolling students in 2028.

The historic donation will "pioneer a model for higher education built for the next era of American innovation," according to a statement from the university.

“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.

The staggering donation is the latest in a long line of developments from Griffin aimed at remaking the Florida city in his own image.

At the center of Griffin's plans is a 54-story global live-work headquarters for Citadel spanning an entire city block in Miami's Brickell financial district.

Griffin, who is worth an estimated $57 billion, began acquiring property for the complex in 2022, purchasing a 2.5-acre property at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive for $363 million. In June of this year, Griffin purchased Solaris, a 22-story condominium property on the same block, after buying up the individual units in the building one by one for a reported $125 million. He completed his ownership of the block by buying the land underneath the historic James Jackson Cottage for $3 million and promising to relocate the historic property in July.

The campus is set to open in around six years and will include restaurants, a public waterfront terrace, and apartments in addition to office space.

Griffin's Miami real estate empire extends to nearby Coconut Grove, FL, where he purchased two bay-front houses for $106.9 million in 2022.

Then there are the seven contiguous properties (about 6.5 acres) Griffin acquired on Miami's exclusive Star Island, dropping approximately $169 million over several transactions since 2023.

In 2025, Griffin picked up an additional 3.8 acres to build a yacht marina along MacArthur Causeway, presumably to house his 308-foot yacht Viva and several other luxury vessels he owns.

All told, Griffin has spent around $1.5 billion on commercial and private real estate in Florida over the past several years while at the same time publicly feuding with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

The billionaire has been a vocal opponent of Mamdani's "pied-a-terre" tax, which would levy a heavy tax on luxury homes that are not primary residences.

Griffin owns a luxury "quadplex" spanning four floors at 220 Central Park South that he paid a record $228 million for in 2019. He also picked up a $38 million duplex at 740 Park Avenue this past April.

This past April 15, Mamdani announced the pied-à-terre tax initiative by filming a video outside Griffin's Central Park address, kicking off a feud with Griffin, who said the video was in "poor taste" and put him "in harm's way."

Griffin and Citadel are in the midst of building an office at 350 Park Avenue, though in May he told CNBC he was reconsidering the project (Griffin has yet to back out).

"We will add far more jobs in Miami over the next decade as an immediate and direct consequence of the mayor's poor decision here with respect to his posting of that video," he told CNBC, adding that he planned to "double down on our bet in Miami."