Hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin is giving Carnegie Mellon University $3 billion to establish a new Miami campus and expand research and education focused on technology, national security, health and other major societal challenges.

Carnegie Mellon announced Wednesday that Griffin’s donation is the largest single gift ever made to an American university. The gift will bring a major expansion of the Pittsburgh-based research university into South Florida.

About $2 billion of the donation will fund a new 35-acre campus in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, just north of downtown. Construction is expected to begin next year, with the campus eventually serving roughly 3,500 undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students.

Rather than organizing the new campus primarily around traditional academic majors, Carnegie Mellon and Griffin said it will focus on what they called “grand challenge areas.” Those areas include human health and biological discovery, national security and strategic capabilities, energy and climate resilience, and advanced manufacturing and industrial transformation.

The remaining $1 billion will be divided between Carnegie Mellon’s Pittsburgh campus computer science program and other unspecified projects. The computer science program will be renamed in Griffin’s honor.

“Throughout our history, CMU has anticipated moments of profound technological change and responded with new ways of thinking and solving problems,” Carnegie Mellon President Farnam Jahanian said. “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.”

The donation comes as universities face pressure to adapt to rapid advances in artificial intelligence while dealing with broader financial challenges. Colleges are confronting declining international enrollment, demographic changes that are reducing the number of high school graduates in some states, and rising costs for healthcare, technology and other expenses.

Griffin, the founder of Citadel and a major Republican donor, has maintained close ties to Miami, where he owns a waterfront home. The Miami metropolitan area has more than 6.4 million residents and already hosts several major universities, including the University of Miami, Florida International University and Miami Dade College.

Griffin said the new campus will give Miami a larger role in Carnegie Mellon’s research and education efforts. “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,” he said.

The university has already developed ties to Florida, including a computer science program that teaches middle school students about artificial intelligence and a partnership with the Gates Foundation to develop AI-powered course materials for introductory mathematics classes at Miami Dade College.

Griffin has previously donated to medical research, charter schools and other universities. His latest gift puts Carnegie Mellon’s expansion into Miami at the center of its efforts to prepare students and conduct research around emerging technologies and other large-scale challenges.