Carnegie Mellon University announced on Wednesday that Ken Griffin, a hedge fund CEO, is donating $3 billion, most of which is intended for a new campus in Miami dedicated to tackling societal challenges.

The Pittsburgh-based private research university said the gift is the largest ever single gift to a U.S. university.

Other donations topping the billion-dollar mark include $1.8 billion from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins University in 2018.

And Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, also have been prolific donors, including a $2 billion gift to Oregon Health & Science University in 2025.

Griffin’s gift encompasses $2 billion to construct a new 35-acre campus in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, situated just north of downtown.

The campus is anticipated to enroll approximately 3,500 undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students.

Construction is slated to commence next year.

Instead of academic majors, the focus will be on what the university and Griffin described in a news release as “grand challenge areas,” including human health and biological discovery; national security and strategic capabilities; energy and climate resilience; and advanced manufacturing and industrial transformation.

The rest of the money will be split equally between the Pittsburgh campus’ computer science program, which will be renamed after Griffin, and other unspecified projects on the main campus.

“Throughout our history, CMU has anticipated moments of profound technological change and responded with new ways of thinking and solving problems,” Carnegie Mellon’s President Farnam Jahanian said in a news release praising Griffin.

“Artificial intelligence represents one of the defining intellectual developments of our time, and it demands that we rethink how we educate students, conduct research and partner with others.”

Colleges are confronting mounting pressure to equip students for a workforce that is undergoing rapid transformation at the hands of AI.

Job postings that incorporate AI and machine learning within their skills requirements or job titles are proliferating.

Simultaneously, financial strains on higher education are intensifying.

International enrollment is declining, precisely as numerous states witness their cohorts of high school seniors beginning to dwindle owing to U.S. demographic shifts.

Meanwhile, expenditures such as fuel, healthcare and technology are escalating.

Griffin, a GOP megadonor who founded the Citadel investment firm, owns a waterfront home in Miami, which is part of a growing metropolitan area whose population exceeds 6.4 million.

The area is already home to the University of Miami, a private research university; Florida International University, a public research university; and Miami Dade College, which began as a community college but additionally confers certain four-year degrees.

Taken together, enrollment at the three institutions amounts to approximately 135,000.

A number of smaller private colleges are likewise situated in the area.

But Griffin, who has donated over the years to causes such as medical research, charter schools and other universities, saw room for something new.

“The opportunity to bring Carnegie Mellon to Miami places our city at the heart of humanistic and scientific advancement and amplifies the University’s international reach and impact,” said Griffin, who is joining Carnegie Mellon’s Board of Trustees, in a news release.

Even before the announcement, Carnegie Mellon had growing ties to Florida, a state where conservatives have increased their influence on higher education.

Its computer science department administers a program devised to instruct middle school students in Florida and several other states in the fundamentals of AI.

The university is likewise engaged in a partnership with the Gates Foundation to implement AI-powered course materials for introductory mathematics classes at Miami Dade College.