Why did Ken Griffin stop donations to Harvard? Net worth explored as billionaire lashes out at students 

Billionaire investor and entrepreneur Ken Griffin made headlines on January 31, 2024, after he announced that he would stop his “sizable donations” to Harvard University. An alumnus of the Ivy League school himself, Ken Griffin stated he was “not interested in supporting the institution” during the Managed Funds Association (MFA) Network Conference in Miami, Florida.

In conversation with CNBC’s Leslie Picker, the Citadel founder and CEO said that unless Harvard resumed “its role educating young American men and women to be leaders and problem solvers,” rather than producing “whiny snowflakes,” like it has been doing recently, he would not be changing his decision to stop funding. He joined the likes of billionaires Leslie Wexner and Leonard Blavatnik who also quit as Harvard donors recently.

He added that the Ivy League students were only “caught up in the rhetoric of oppressor and oppressed,” and said he would have to rethink whether he wanted to hire them for his multinational business.

“Will America’s elite universities get back to the roots of educating American children — young adults — to be the future leaders of our country or are they going to maintain being lost in the wilderness of microaggressions and a DEI agenda that has no real endgame,” Griffin added.

Meanwhile, as per Harvard Gazette, Ken Griffin has been one of the major donors of the school and has invested more than $500 million as of April 2023. In the wake of the latest development, here’s taking a look at Ken Griffin’s net worth.

---

Exploring the fortune of Ken Griffin

According to Bloomberg, Ken Griffin is one of the world’s richest individuals with an approximate net worth of $36.8 billion. His biggest asset is Citadel Advisors, a hedge fund with $63 billion in assets as of December 2023. Griffin started it in 1990 under the name Wellington Financial Group, which was changed in 1994.

It is a Miami-based firm that focuses on the areas of fixed income and macro, quantitative strategies, commodities, equities, and credit. As per the 2022 Form ADV filing and rating report obtained by Bloomberg, Griffin has $9 billion worth of personal assets in Citadel funds and currently owns 85% of the hedge fund company. He is also the co-chief investment officer of Citadel LLC.

Ken Griffin is also the founding member of Citadel Securities, a market-making company operating worldwide, and owns 80% of it at present, which is valued at $22 billion.

The Harvard alumnus who graduated with a degree in economics is also a real estate magnate with lucrative properties across the country such as in Chicago, New York, The Hamptons, Palm Beach, Miami, Hawaii, and Colorado. He also has properties in London. All of these are valued at their “purchased prices,” as per the Wall Street Journal.

Bloomberg reported an insider source stating that the 55-year-old Griffin has liabilities worth $2 billion, including mortgages. In 2008, Citadel lost $9 billion in a bear market situation and took four years to recover. 2022 was a milestone year for both Ken and his hedge fund company, as it brought a record-breaking $16 billion profit for its clients.

---

In the wake of Griffin taking a step back as one of Harvard’s megadonors, it is noteworthy that in April 2023, he donated $300 million to the university’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and praised the Ivy League school as a “great institution” which was “committed to advancing ideas that will shape humanity’s future, while providing important insight into our past.”

Likewise, in 2014, he made another sizable $150 million contribution to Harvard, which was deemed the “largest single gift” ever to Harvard back then.