Ken Griffin

Early life

Griffin was born in 1968 in Daytona Beach, Florida, the son of a building supplies executive. His father had various jobs, and was a project manager for General Electric. Griffin's grandmother, Genevieve Huebsch Gratz, inherited an oil business, three farms, and a seed business after her husband and multiple relatives died. Griffin grew up in Boca Raton, Florida, as well as Texas and Wisconsin. He went to middle school in Boca Raton and Boca Raton Community High School, where he was the president of the math club. In high school, Griffin ran a discount mail-order education software firm, EDCOM, out of his bedroom. In a 1986 Sun-Sentinel article, he said he thought he would become a businessman or lawyer and that he believed the job market for computer programmers would significantly decline over the coming decade. Griffin started at Harvard College in 1986. That year, one of his first investments was to buy put options on Home Shopping Network. He made $5,000. He also invested in convertible arbitrage opportunities in convertible bonds. Despite a ban on running businesses from campus, Griffin convinced school administrators to allow him to install a satellite dish on the roof his dormitory, Cabot House, to receive stock quotes. He also asked Terrence J. O'Connor, the manager of convertible bonds at Merrill Lynch in Boston, to open a brokerage account for him with $100,000 that Griffin had gotten from his grandmother, his dentist, and others. His first fund launched in 1987, with $265,000. It launched in time to profit from short positions on Black Monday. Griffin graduated from Harvard in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics.

Griffin has worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to promote charter schools in the U.S. and fund tutoring. In 2011, he worked with University of Chicago economics professor John A. List to test whether investment in teachers or in parents produces better student performance outcomes. At the beginning of 2014, Griffin made a $150 million donation to the financial aid program at Harvard University, his alma mater, the largest single donation ever made to the institution at the time. In 2014, he was elected to a five-year term on the University of Chicago's board of trustees. He is also a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and the civic committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago. Griffin is the vice chairman of the Chicago Public Education Fund. In October 2017, Griffin's charitable fund donated $1 million to the Obama Foundation. In November 2017, Griffin's charitable fund made a $125 million gift to support the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago, renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics. Griffin donated $21.5 million to the Field Museum of Natural History and its dinosaur exhibit is named the Griffin Dinosaur Experience. In October 2019, Griffin's charitable fund announced a $125 million gift to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the largest gift in th

The fortune

Griffin is a large private donor to charities and nonprofit organizations, having donated over $2 billion to charities so far.

Personal life

Griffin's first wife was Katherine Weingartt, his high-school sweetheart. The couple married in 1991 and divorced in 1996. In March 2002, Griffin met his second wife, Anne Dias-Griffin, after being set up on a blind date by a mutual friend. The couple married in July 2003 and had three children. In July 2014, Griffin filed a divorce petition in Cook County, Illinois, citing "irreconcilable differences" with Dias-Griffin. The couple had a prenuptial agreement that governed the split of their assets in the event of divorce. The couple settled their divorce out of court in October 2015, just hours before a public trial over the prenuptial agreement was set to begin. As part of the divorce, Griffin paid $11.75 million to buy out his wife's interest in their Chicago penthouse. He and Dias-Griffin maintain joint custody of their children.

Career

After graduating in 1989, Griffin moved to Chicago to work with Frank Meyer, founder of Glenwood Capital Investments. Meyer allotted $1 million of Glenwood capital for Griffin to trade and Griffin made 70% in a year. In 1990, Griffin founded Citadel LLC, with assets under management of $4.6 million, aided by contributions from Meyer. His funds made 43% in 1991 and 40% in 1992. In the early 2000s, Griffin founded market maker Citadel Securities. In January 2022, Citadel Securities raised $1.15 billion from Sequoia Capital and Paradigm at a valuation of $22 billion, in its first outside investment since its founding. As of January 2026, Citadel has approximately $67 billion in assets under management, after distributing $5 billion in 2025 profits to investors. Since its founding in 1990, Citadel has generated approximately $90.4 billion in net gains after fees, making it the most profitable hedge fund in history, according to LCH Investments. In 2003, aged 34, Griffin was the youngest person on the Forbes 400, with an estimated net worth of $650 million. From the time of his second marriage to Anne Dias in 2003 until late 2009, Griffin was the lead investor in Aragon Global Management, a hedge fund run by his then wife. The fund was also seeded with money from Julian Robertson. Griffin lost 20% of his investment in the fund. In 2006, Citadel acquired the positions of Amaranth Advisors at a steep discount. During the 2008 financial crisis, for 10 months, Griffin barred his investors from withdrawing money, attracting criticism. At the crisis's peak, the firm was losing "hundreds of millions of dollars each week". It was leveraged 7:1 and the biggest funds at Citadel finished 2008 down 55%, but rebounded with a 62% return in 2009. In 2022, as global markets suffered their worst losses since 2008, Citadel's flagship Wellington fund delivered a 38.1% return, generating a record $16 billion in profits for investors, the largest annual gain in hedge fund history, surpassing John Paulson's $15 billion gain during the 2007 subprime crisis. At year end, Citadel returned $7 billion in profits to investors to keep its asset base lean. From Citadel LLC, Griffin earned $900 million in 2009, $1.4 billion in 2014, $600 million in 2016, $1.4 billion in 2017, $870 million in 2018, $1.5 billion in 2019, and $1.8 billion in 2020. In November 2020, according to Bloomberg News, Griffin's net worth surpassed $20 billion due to an increase in the value of Citadel, of which Griffin's stake was worth $11.2 billion. Citadel Securities, a market maker, increased its profit to $2.36 billion during the first half of 2020 compared to $982 million for the same period in 2019, due to increased volatility, volume and retail trader engagement. In January 2021, Griffin attracted criticism for the role Citadel played in the GameStop short squeeze. On January 25, it was announced that Citadel would invest $2 billion into Melvin Capital, which had suffered losses of more than 30% on

Yachts & assets

Griffin owns personal residences valued at more than $1 billion. Since 2009, he has purchased multiple residences, mostly in the U.S., but also in England. Some of Griffin's real estate purchases were in Miami, Florida; Palm Beach, Florida; New York City; Southampton, New York; and London, England. Several broke records, such as the 2019 purchase of 24,000 square-feet on three floors at 220 Central Park South for $238 million, the most expensive residential sale ever closed in U.S. history, and his 2023 purchase of the Coconut Grove Arsht estate in Miami, which set a Miami-Dade County record at the time. In October 2025, Griffin proposed a private megayacht marina on Miami Beach's Terminal Island. Designed at 30,000 square feet, the marina would be part of a 3.7-acre property with berth spaces for six superyachts, along with pools, pickleball courts, and facilities for crew. It was approved in November 2025.