Christian von Koenigsegg

EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Class of 2024, Sweden
Founder and CEO of Koenigsegg Automotive AB 

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Christian von Koenigsegg is pushing the boundaries of automotive racing technology.

In the early 1990s, Christian von Koenigsegg dreamed about what he could achieve in the racing industry with a clean-sheet design and a single-minded dedication to developing the absolute best in automotive technology. In 1994, at the age of 22 and without any formal training in engineering or substantial financial resources, he established Koenigsegg Automotive, a company for hypercars. What he had, however, was an instinctive gift for design, an unrelenting entrepreneurial spirit and the sense to surround himself with great people.  

Koenigsegg Automotive's first race car arrived in 2002. A technical tour-de-force for its time, it received both a Guinness World Record for the world’s most powerful production engine and a Red Dot Design Award. Records, awards and accolades have followed with each new model. 

Today, new technologies that optimize vehicle performance, are all developed in-house. The company’s recent Freevalve engine and Light Speed Transmission gearbox designs offer immense potential to overcome the traditional disadvantages of a camshaft-driven engine across the entire industry. Koenigsegg’s electric drive architectures, already proven in its own automotive applications, are now being adopted by parallel transportation industries.  

Over the past 10 years, Koenigsegg Automotive has increased both its head count and physical footprint significantly, patented innumerable new technologies, established a global distribution network and has a track record of selling out new models within days of release.