By Svea Herbst-Bayliss
NEW YORK, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Billionaire investor Ken Griffin is donating $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University to build a new campus in Miami and support initiatives at its Pittsburgh base, including hiring leading academics and making the school more affordable for students, the university and Griffin said on Wednesday.
Griffin, the 57-year-old investor best known as the founder and CEO of Citadel, the most profitable hedge fund in history, has long written very big checks
to support education, science and medicine. This exceeds those donations.
"This is the largest single investment in higher education in the history of the United States," Griffin told Reuters, adding "It is the investment in excellence."
The 126-year-old university and Griffin jointly announced the donation, which will be divided between supporting initiatives at its campus in Pittsburgh and building a new campus in Miami, in Griffin's home state of Florida.
The gift also underscores Griffin's bet on the future of the US by helping support Miami, where his business is now headquartered, as a southern hub for finance, technology and innovation.
Griffin and Carnegie Mellon President Farnam Jahanian said $1 billion is earmarked for the computer science school, to be renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin School of Computer Science, and other priorities, including financial aid.
But the bulk of the gift will be used to build a new campus in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood where students, professors and researchers will work on solving problems and finding new solutions in human health and biological diversity, national security and strategic capabilities, energy and climate resilience and advanced manufacturing and industrial transformation, Griffin and Jahanian said in an interview.
The new campus is scheduled to open for graduate students in 2028 and accept undergraduates four years later, they said.
The gift is being announced one week after athletic wear company Nike co-founder Phil Knight donated $1 billion to start an engineering college at the University of Oregon.
Universities are racing to find wealthy donors while wealthy benefactors are opening their wallets to build out science and technology programs at a time when artificial intelligence is fueling massive economic changes.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has donated $4.5 billion over the years to his alma mater Johns Hopkins, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported, including a $1.8 billion gift in 2018.
Carnegie Mellon, founded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie, is best known for its programs in computer science, artificial intelligence, robotics and the performing arts. Its School of Computer Science is ranked as America's best undergraduate computer science program, costing students $71,000 a year.
Griffin, whose net worth was estimated at $60.5 billion by Forbes, will join the school's board of trustees, which already counts hedge fund billionaire David Tepper, a Carnegie Mellon alumnus and donor, among its ranks.
Since moving Citadel's headquarters to Miami from Chicago in 2022, Griffin has stepped up his commitments to south Florida to a total of roughly $2.4 billion, including support for a charter school network in Miami, the University of Miami and Miami Dade College, as well as public schools and math tutoring.
He has also donated $500 million to his alma mater, Harvard, and $125 million to the University of Chicago's economics department. Including the gift to Carnegie Mellon, he has donated $5.7 billion.
"We need more innovation, we need more job creation, we need more in areas in which American firms have a competitive advantage compared with companies around the world," Griffin said. "That is how we are going to maintain our standard of living in America."
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Colin Barr and Daniel Wallis)
