Billionaires Stephen Ross and Ken Griffin both relocated — from New York City and Chicago, respectively — to Florida, convinced it’s the best state in the country to run a business. Now they’re putting $10 million behind a new campaign to convince other CEOs and founders to follow suit.
“The only place a CEO or founder can scale from 10 employees to 10,000 will be in South Florida,” Ross told me. “While other cities are still special, they no longer support building business and supporting ambition like you can find here.
“The next generation of transformational leaders in business will come from South Florida.”
In a video the campaign plans to release, Griffin and Ross emphasize that “Florida is the future” and that Florida will become the “new Silicon Valley.”
Griffin, who founded the Citadel hedge fund, is worth approximately $51.3 billion, according to Forbes. Ross, the founder of real estate juggernaut Related Companies (and now leads its South Florida-focused spinoff, Related Ross), is worth around $17 billion, Forbes reports.
The two are backing “Ambition Accelerated,” an initiative through the Florida Council of 100. The campaign targets CEOs and investors with national ads and direct outreach, pitching Florida’s Gold Coast (the southeast part of the state from Miami to West Palm Beach) as the premier place to scale a company.
Beyond advertising, the push includes a dedicated concierge program that connects executives with resources to make the move: helping relocate operations, navigate regulations and set up shop.
While businesses have been fleeing New York and California for years — a trend accelerated by COVID and regulations — this marks one of the first concerted, high-profile efforts positioning Florida as the go-to destination for builders and innovators.
To be sure, both Ross and Griffin will benefit from businesses and executives relocating to South Florida (not that they need the money).
Griffin, whose Palm Beach home is valued at $1 billion, is redeveloping a shopping center in Palm Beach and expanding Citadel’s $2.5 billion headquarters in Miami.
Ross, who launched a Palm Beach-focused division of his Related company, has invested $10 billion in real estate across the region.
But an advisor on the campaign notes that both men genuinely believe the future of American business depends on whether entrepreneurs can find places that actually let them build — and those places are getting harder to find.
They announced the effort today at the Wall Street Journal’s Invest Live conference in West Palm Beach. Signs at the event captured a contrast: One read, “They regulate ambition,” while another next to it declared, “We accelerate it.”
At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Griffin expressed his frustration with Democratic policies, saying the Biden administration’s regulations were “exhausting” and “cost the US economy dearly.”
The California Post reported that the the Golden State lost nearly $1 trillion in wealth in just the past month due to fears over a proposed “Billionaire Tax” ballot initiative, though it’s unclear what percent of that wealth was moved to Florida. New York City, meanwhile, has reportedly lost at least $14 billion in taxes to Florida since 2020.
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