Tycoon Ken Griffin has donated $2 billion to build a campus in Miami dedicated primarily to artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics for Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)—based in Pittsburgh and a U.S. leader in technology.
Griffin, founder of the financial firm Citadel, donated a total of $3 billion to CMU; $1 billion is earmarked for the main campus in Pennsylvania, while the remainder will fund the construction of a new technology-focused facility in Miami, Florida, starting in 2027, the university announced on Wednesday.
The new campus—Carnegie Mellon University Miami—will accommodate more than 3,500 undergraduate and graduate students, nearly 300 faculty members, and close to 600 staff members across a 35-acre (14-hectare) site in Wynwood, the city’s arts district, with the first enrollments scheduled for 2028.
The new center, which promises to be a “living laboratory,” will initially focus on four “challenge” areas: health and biological discoveries; national security and strategic capabilities; energy and climate resilience; and advanced manufacturing and industrial transformation, the university detailed.
The university—ranked first for undergraduate computer science in the U.S. News & World Report “Best Colleges” 2027 rankings—states that the campus will represent a new model in which teaching and research serve as “equally fundamental pillars,” featuring corporate research laboratories and studios for new projects. “Artificial intelligence represents one of the most significant intellectual advancements of our time and requires us to rethink how we educate our students, conduct research, and collaborate with one another,” stated CMU President Farnam Jahanian.
The university noted that this is the largest individual donation in the history of higher education and also the largest gift from Griffin, who has become a leading philanthropist driving Miami’s growth since moving to South Florida from Chicago in 2022.
“CMU Miami represents a historic opportunity to create a new hub for research and intellectual development that will attract the most exceptional students, scholars, and researchers from around the world and position the academic institution as one of the most important on the planet,” Griffin remarked.
