Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin has committed $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University, the school announced Wednesday — the largest gift by an individual to a higher education institution, according to CMU.

The pledge stands out even amid a recent flurry of billionaire giving to higher education. Nike cofounder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, recently committed $1 billion to the University of Oregon, oil tycoon Harold Hamm gave $150 million to the University of Oklahoma, and numerous other donors have made gifts of $100 million or more to schools in recent weeks.

Griffin's gift, however, is different in kind: it establishes an entirely new campus. Of the $3 billion total, $1 billion will support CMU's Pittsburgh campus, while the remaining $2 billion will launch CMU Miami.

Griffin's big bet on Miami

Griffin, a Florida native who grew up in Boca Raton, moved his family and the headquarters of both Citadel and Citadel Securities to Miami in 2022 after more than three decades in Chicago, where he had grown increasingly vocal about crime. He has insisted that taxes were not the reason for the move, citing "great schools, a great environment" and streets that are "safe and clean."

Citadel now employs roughly 500 people in Miami and is building a 54-story headquarters on Brickell Bay, slated for completion in 2030 at an estimated cost of $2.5 billion. The CMU pledge extends that Miami presence into higher education.

"The best thing I ever did was move to Miami for my kids," Griffin told Fortune senior editor-at-large Shawn Tully in an interview earlier this year. Of the city itself, he said, "[There's an] optimism in the air here."

Education as a personal cause

Education holds personal significance for Griffin. His father was the first in his family to attend college, and his grandmother paid for all of her grandchildren's college educations.

"The belief in the family was always that education was the road to prosperity," Griffin said in a statement released by CMU. "It's the on-ramp to the American Dream."

According to the university, Griffin has now given more than $5.7 billion to education, opportunity, and health sciences causes, including more than $500 million to his alma mater, Harvard University.

A new model for a 126-year-old institution

CMU Miami will do more than extend the 126-year-old university's footprint; it will introduce a fundamentally new structure. According to the school, the campus will "invert the traditional higher education model" by organizing learning around societal challenges rather than academic majors. Those focus areas include human health and biological discovery; national security and strategic capabilities; energy and climate resilience; and advanced manufacturing and industrial transformation. The school also plans to prioritize new approaches to teaching and learning.

The campus is planned for Miami's Wynwood neighborhood, an arts and entertainment district north of downtown that has in recent years drawn a growing number of tech companies and startups. It is expected to eventually support more than 3,500 undergraduate, master's, and PhD students, along with nearly 300 faculty. Griffin will join CMU's board of trustees, pairing the landmark pledge with a formal governance role as the campus takes shape.

"Great American cities are anchored by great universities, with almost no exception," Griffin told the Financial Times.

A broader trend — and the role of AI

CMU is not the only elite university expanding into a new city with billionaire backing. In July, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and his wife, Lori, pledged $75 million to Vanderbilt University to create a new college of art, architecture, and design at its San Francisco campus.

The announcement also indicates that AI's growing influence on education and society helped shape the new campus and its learning model. CMU President Farnam Jahanian said in a statement that the technology "demands that we rethink how we educate students, conduct research, and partner with others."

Construction is slated to begin in 2027, and CMU plans to enroll its first Miami students in 2028, pending regulatory approvals — the near-term milestones to watch as CMU Miami moves from announcement to opening.

"What we're about to embark on in Miami will create one of the great stories in higher education of our lifetime," Griffin said in a statement.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.