Kjellberg was born October 24, 1989, in Gothenburg, Sweden, the younger of two children. His father, Ulf Kjellberg, worked as a corporate executive, and his mother, Lotta Kjellberg (nee Hellstrand), was a chief information officer who was later named Sweden’s CIO of the Year. He grew up with an older sister, Fanny, and developed an early interest in video games and art. After finishing secondary school, Kjellberg enrolled at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg to study industrial economics and technology management. He left in 2011 — not, as is often repeated online, specifically to chase a YouTube career, but because he had lost interest in the coursework, a distinction he has clarified himself in later interviews. He supported himself with a job at a hot dog stand while building his channel in his spare time before it became financially viable.

Kjellberg registered the “PewDiePie” YouTube channel on April 29, 2010, initially posting Let’s Play commentary over horror and action games. His unfiltered reactions and screaming-heavy commentary style built a loyal following through 2011 and 2012, and by August 2013 the channel had become the most-subscribed on all of YouTube, a position it held, with a couple of brief interruptions, for most of the rest of the decade. Recognition followed the growth: he won a Streamy Award in 2015 and the Teen Choice Award for Choice Gamer in 2019, alongside YouTube’s own Ruby (2016) and Red Diamond (2019) Creator Awards, which the platform hands out at fixed subscriber milestones. On August 25, 2019, he became the first individual creator to reach 100 million subscribers, a threshold that underlined how far the channel had grown from its horror-game-commentary roots.

Kjellberg’s most consequential career setback arrived in February 2017, after the Wall Street Journal compiled nine videos containing Nazi imagery or antisemitic jokes. Disney’s Maker Studios severed its ties with him within days, ending a multi-channel-network deal that had also given him a co-ownership stake in Maker’s Revelmode network. YouTube followed almost immediately, cancelling the already-filmed second season of his YouTube Red original series “Scare PewDiePie” and pulling his channel from its Google Preferred premium-advertising program. Kjellberg apologized for the videos while disputing that they reflected his views. His channel recovered commercially in the following years — he continued to rank among YouTube’s top earners through 2019 — though the incident remains the clearest example of a controversy with a direct, documented effect on his contracts and ad revenue. Later in 2019, as his channel traded the top subscriber spot back and forth with Indian label T-Series, Kjellberg publicly stepped back from the rivalry and asked his fans to stop campaigning on his behalf. Away from controversy, his content shifted over the following years toward Minecraft playthroughs, retro-gaming series, and, after relocating abroad, vlogs about daily life in Japan. He married his longtime partner, Italian YouTuber Marzia Bisognin, in London in August 2019.

PewDiePie was one of only a handful of creators Forbes tracked closely enough to estimate year over year during YouTube’s first decade as a mainstream advertising business. Forbes put his 2016 pre-tax earnings at $15 million, ranking him No. 1 on its highest-paid YouTube stars list that year. His estimated earnings dipped to $12 million in 2017 (No. 6) as the Disney and YouTube Red fallout weighed on the year, then rebounded to $15.5 million in 2018, when Forbes ranked him No. 9 on a list that had grown more crowded with new competitors. By 2019, Forbes estimated his earnings at $13 million, tied for 7th place as family and children’s channels came to dominate the top of the list. Forbes has not published a comparable annual ranking that includes PewDiePie since 2019; independent tracking sites estimate his channel’s current ad income in the low six figures annually given his reduced upload schedule, though these newer figures are modeled estimates rather than confirmed accounting.

Kjellberg’s most significant multi-channel-network deal was the 2014 partnership with Disney’s Maker Studios, which included a stake in the Revelmode network and ran until Disney terminated it in February 2017. His YouTube Red original series, “Scare PewDiePie,” ran for one full season before YouTube cancelled the already-completed second season in the same controversy. In publishing, Kjellberg’s 2015 book “This Book Loves You,” released through Razorbill/Penguin, debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times Best Sellers list in its category. He also licensed his name and likeness to Canadian studio Outerminds for the mobile and PC platformer “PewDiePie: Legend of the Brofist,” released in September 2015, which reportedly became the top-grossing paid app in the US App Store within hours of launch. None of these deals’ specific dollar values were disclosed publicly, so only their existence and documented outcomes are described here.

Kjellberg’s best-documented brand sponsorship is with gaming energy-drink company G FUEL, which he announced in a January 2019 video and which later produced a PewDiePie-branded lingonberry flavor. The financial terms of that partnership were never made public, and it does not appear to remain active in his current content. Beyond G FUEL, Kjellberg has been more selective about paid brand integrations than many creators of his scale, and no other endorsement deal with comparable, independently verified sourcing is documented in mainstream or trade press.

Kjellberg’s clearest outside venture is Tsuki, a unisex clothing and lifestyle brand he launched with Marzia Bisognin in September 2018, selling hoodies, t-shirts, and Japan-inspired accessories. Independent reporting does not document a formal media company, restaurant chain, technology investment, or other outside business founded or majority-owned by Kjellberg beyond Tsuki and his licensed mobile game. Claims of larger investment portfolios circulate on low-authority celebrity-net-worth aggregators without primary sourcing, so they are not repeated here as fact.

Kjellberg and Bisognin lived in Brighton, England, for roughly nine years, and separately bought a house in Japan that was announced in 2019, before the couple relocated to Japan full time in May 2022, having been delayed by pandemic border restrictions. In April 2025, Kjellberg announced he had bought land in Japan to build a permanent family home, saying the couple planned to stay in the country indefinitely to raise their son. No purchase price for the Brighton house, the earlier Japan property, or the newly purchased land has been documented in reliable public reporting, so no specific figures are given for any of these; this article notes only what has actually been reported.