Background and career
Kenneth Cordele Griffin (born 1968) is an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder, chief executive officer, co-chief investment officer, and 80% owner of Citadel LLC, a multinational hedge fund. He also owns Citadel Securities, one of the largest market makers in the United States. As of January 2026, Griffin had an estimated net worth of $51.2 billion, making him the world's 34th-richest person. In 2015, he made the largest private art deal in history when he bought two paintings, Willem de Kooning's Interchange and Jackson Pollock's Number 17A, for $500 million. Griffin was included in Forbes's 2023 list of the U.S.'s Most Generous Givers, according to which he had donated $1.56 billion to various charitable causes, primarily in education, economic mobility, and medical research. He has also contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to political candidates and causes, usually Republican or conservative in ideology. Griffin is a member of The Business Council.
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 of 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.
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 account of its short positions, particularly on GameStop. On January 28, Robinhood, an electronic trading platform favored by many traders involved in buying GameStop stock and options, announced that it would halt all purchases of GameStop securities and only allow these securities to be sold; the price of GME stock declined steeply shortly thereafter. Because Robinhood received a substantial portion of its revenue through a payment for order flow relationship with Citadel, 85% of which Griffin owned, many commentators criticized the potential for conflict of interest when the same entity both plays the role of market-maker and also participates in the market it makes; Griffin has been at the center of much discussion of this controversy. On February 18, 2021, he testified before the House Financial Services Committee about his role in the GameStop controversy; Griffin had donated money directly to four members of the committee, Republicans French Hill, Andy Barr, Ann Wagner, and Bill Huizenga. Thereafter, the SEC concluded that conspiracy theories about the event were unfounded. In June 2022, Griffin announced that Citadel and Citadel Securities would move their global headquarters from Chicago to Miami. He said that Miami offered a growing business environment and cited concerns regarding crime and public policy in Chicago. Citadel indicated that it would continue to maintain offices in Chicago while establishing Miami as its headquarters. In January 2026, Griffin partnered with Goldman Properties to spend at least $180 million for an office building in the Wynwood creative district, expanding Citadel's footprint in Miami.
Griffin is a large private donor to charities and nonprofit organizations, having donated over $2 billion to charities so far.
In September 2023, Griffin launched Griffin Catalyst, a platform intended to organize and highlight his philanthropic and civic engagement initiatives. According to him, the effort was designed to provide an umbrella framework for future charitable giving and focuses on six areas: education, science and medicine, upward mobility, freedom and democracy, enterprise and innovation, and communities. Reuters described Griffin Catalyst as a platform showcasing philanthropic organizations and initiatives supported by his giving.
From 2000 to 2022, Griffin served on the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's board of trustees. In July 2007, Griffin donated a $19 million addition to the Art Institute of Chicago designed by Renzo Piano and named Kenneth and Anne Griffin Court. One of his paintings by Paul Cézanne was loaned to the institute. In 2010, Griffin contributed to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's productions at Millennium Park. Griffin contributed to the Art Institute of Chicago and resigned from its board in 2022. He serves on the board of trustees at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, whose lobby bears his name: Kenneth C. Griffin Hall. In February 2015, Griffin donated $10 million to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago to create the Griffin Galleries of Contemporary Art. In December 2015, Griffin donated an unrestricted $40 million to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2018, he donated $20 million to the Norton Museum of Art.
