PewDiePie emerged as one of YouTube's pioneer online content creators. In fact, many credit him as one of the major influencers in the online video gaming culture. But as Felix Kjellberg attests, it took quite an unexpected and unbelievable journey to get there. Let's dig into PewDiePie's net worth in 2022.
PewDiePie's net worth in 2022 (Estimate): $40 million
PewDiePie's net worth in 2022 is $40 million. This is according to numerous outlets, including Celebrity Net Worth.
Felix Kjellberg was born on October 24, 1989 in Gothenburg, Sweden. He grew up interested in art and video games, and spent high school playing with friends at an Internet café. He later enrolled at Chalmers University of Technology with the intent to pursue a degree in industrial economics and technology management, but dropped out in 2011. According to Looper, it was not due to YouTube, but due to boredom.
“To drop out of university to pursue YouTube, that'd just be f—ing stupid … Industrial management and economics – it was boring as hell. Everyone was boring as hell. I couldn't relate to f—ing anyone.”
In 2006, 17-year-old Felix registered a YouTube account named Pewdie. A few years after, he'd make another channel after forgetting his first account's password. Thus, on April 29, 2010, PewDiePie was created. To put it simply, Kjellberg made “Let's Play” videos, where he films himself playing certain video games while viewers listen to him commenting. Besides commentary videos, Kjellberg also started posting weekly vlogs. And people liked it. PewDiePie's audience grew, and it grew in record time.
PewDiePie had 60,000 subscribers by December 2011. Five months later, he reached 500,000. Barely three months later on July 2012, Kjellberg's platform had amassed a million subscribers. During this period, he became one of the fastest-growing channels on the platform.
A little over a year later on August 15, 2013, PewDiePie became YouTube's most subscribed channel, overtaking Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla's Smosh. He held the position for more than 2000 days before being overtaken by Indian music video channel T-Series. Kjellberg took back the top spot briefly for almost two weeks back in April 2019 before T-Series permanently surpassed his subscriber count.
The 32-year-old YouTuber's journey, much like any other Internet personality, has not been without controversy. Kjellberg has previously lost partnerships due to several videos where he used racial slurs and anti-Semitic language and imagery. Although he later apologized, the YouTuber expressed his frustration regarding how the media took the said content out of context.
Kjellberg is married to long-time girlfriend Marzia Bisognin. Bisognin's friend introduced the two to each other back in 2011. The couple then initially moved back and forth between Sweden and Italy, where Bisognin was from. On August 19, 2019, the two finally wed, exactly eight years after they met. Kjellberg and Bisognin eventually settled down in Brighton and Hove, England. The 32-year-old Swede expressed his admiration for the town to ESPN‘s Wayne Drehs.
“It's nice here. Anytime I'm [in Los Angeles], people are constantly patting you on the back, telling you how great you are. It f—s with your brain. I started YouTube because I was bored, not to become famous.”
As of January 2022, Kjellberg's online persona PewDiePie has amassed 111 million subscribers. He is currently the number one gaming channel, the most-subscribed individual user on YouTube, and the fourth most-subscribed YouTube channel. In 2019, YouTube gave Kjellberg the Red Diamond Creator award. The said award was given to channels who reached the 100 million subscribers milestone; PewDiePie was the first channel run by an individual creator to surpass the said subscriber count. It is then no surprise that the 32-year-old has ranked consistently as one of the highest-earning YouTubers. However, he has expressed disdain about the topic through a video.
“It seems like the whole world cares more about how much money I make than I do myself. We did raise a million dollars for charity, and very few articles picked up on that, but here it is everywhere how much money I make.”
Kjellberg's online platform obviously allows him quite a massive audience reach. And with this reach, he has in fact raised money for several charities and started fundraisers for a number of causes. He has donated to organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, Charity: Water, and Team Trees. He has also raised millions of dollars in total for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the Sentencing Project, Red Nose Day, Blue Ocean Foundation, Save the Children Lebanon, and many more.
With this, were you at all stunned by PewDiePie's net worth in 2022?