Ken Griffin has built Citadel into one of the most influential and profitable firms on Wall Street, spanning both a massive multi-strategy hedge fund and a separate market-making business that together have made Griffin one of the wealthiest people in the world. Here are 10 facts about the empire he built.

1. It started in a Harvard dorm room. Griffin began trading convertible bonds in 1987 while still an undergraduate at Harvard University, operating out of his dorm room with a computer, a fax machine and a telephone. He raised his initial trading capital, $265,000, from his mother, his grandmother and two non-family investors. By his senior year, he had grown that stake into $1 million in investor money using the same convertible-bond arbitrage strategy.

2. Citadel was officially founded on November 1, 1990. Griffin launched Citadel Investment Group with just $4.2 million in assets under management. He graduated from Harvard in 1989 with an economics degree, completing his studies in three years before formally starting the firm the following year.

3. Citadel's flagship fund now manages tens of billions of dollars. As of mid-2026, Citadel's hedge fund business managed approximately $67 billion to $69 billion in assets, according to figures reported by Bloomberg........

© International Business Times