Ken Griffin’s $2 billion gift will fund a Carnegie Mellon campus in Miami

Ken Griffin is donating $2 billion to establish a Carnegie Mellon University campus in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood. The planned campus will cover 35 acres; Carnegie Mellon is known for computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics. The gift was described in the source as the largest individual gift ever to higher education.

The campus comes as Miami is described as lacking a deep local technical talent pool and the established technology-company offices that help graduates find local jobs and employers recruit experienced workers. Companies moving to the city have sometimes acquired businesses and relocated teams; scaling a startup from 10 people to 1,000 has historically been difficult because hiring is hard-fought. A forecast tied to the campus is that graduates and technology companies drawn by those skills could reshape Miami for decades, if not centuries.