Benedetto Vigna: The CEO of Ferrari

On 9 June 2021, Ferrari announced its new chief executive officer: Benedetto Vigna. With a background in physics and over two decades in the semiconductor industry, he was an unconventional choice. But Ferrari had recognized semiconductor's impact on the automotive industry, and given his accomplishments, the choice made sense. This is his story.

Key insights

• Semiconductor background: Vigna spent 26 years at STMicroelectronics, playing a key role in establishing one of Europe's largest semiconductor companies before becoming CEO of Ferrari in 2021.

• Flat organization: One of his first acts was to interview about 300 employees and flatten the organization due to what he called the "bureaucratic mass index."

• Developing the Luce: Under Vigna, Ferrari developed the Luce, its first electric vehicle, with deliveries expected to begin late 2026.

The early life and career at STMicroelectronics

Benedetto Vigna was born in Potenza on April 10, 1969, and grew up in the nearby town of Pietrapertosa. After completing his schooling, he moved north to enroll at the University of Pisa, where he graduated with honors in physics in 1993.

Rather than moving directly into an industry job, Vigna first spent two years at European research institutions before joining STMicroelectronics (ST) in 1995. ST is a Franco-Italian semiconductor company where he would spend the next two and a half decades of his life.

When Vigna first joined STMicroelectronics, or SGS-THOMSON as it was called back then, it had a fundamentally different focus. In 1995, the computer applications division was the largest, driven mainly by hard-drive power-control chips and standardized memory products.

Microelectromechanical systems, MEMS in short, is the technology that allows microscopic mechanical components to be embedded in silicon, and in 1995, no one at ST was working on it. Vigna changed that.

His team developed a broad range of applications, including the three-axis accelerometer. It was first deployed in automotive airbags and later in consumer electronics as costs and size came down. In 2007, Apple chose ST as its supplier for the accelerometers in the original iPhone, with the company becoming the exclusive provider of both accelerometers and gyroscopes for their product line during a period.

By 2012, ST had reached a 48% share of the mobile and handset MEMS market, more than twice that of its closest competitor, making it the global number one in the segment (STMicroelectronics 2012 Annual Report, sourced through Quartr Pro).

Over the years, Vigna's remit expanded to include connectivity, imaging, and power solutions, with a growing focus on automotive and industrial applications. He was appointed President of the Analog, MEMS, and Sensors Group in 2016, and by the time he left in 2021, it had become the largest division in terms of revenue at ST.

The AMS group (Analog, MEMS, and Sensors) had by then evolved well beyond its MEMS origins into a broader sensing and analog business. What had started as a blank page had become one, if not the most important, part of the business.

Becoming CEO of Ferrari

Ferrari's chairman (and acting CEO) John Elkann was searching for a new CEO in 2021. The company was in good financial shape but was facing a more fundamental question about its future. The automotive industry was changing quickly, and electrification and software were undeniably transforming what a car is at its core.

Ferrari needed a leader who understood those fundamentals. Vigna had spent 26 years working with that type of technology. On June 9, 2021, the company announced that he would take the CEO role.

The first months: listening and restructuring

In his early months at Ferrari, Vigna conducted one-on-one interviews with about 300 employees from across the organization, presumably from engineers on the factory floor to managers in the executive suite (although the range of employees is unconfirmed). What he found was a structure that had grown too layered.

At a cybersecurity meeting, Vigna concluded there were nine organizational levels in the room. Vigna named the problem "bureaucratic mass index" and immediately started to reduce it.

The approach was deliberate rather than disruptive. In a 2023 Bloomberg interview, Vigna spoke about his preference for smaller teams, arguing that people in large groups often feel like numbers rather than contributors, and that the speed of learning from mistakes accelerates when teams are smaller. He also invited employees to drive Ferraris on a racetrack, allowing them to test the product they were building.

In January 2022, Vigna brought in Ernesto Lasalandra as Chief R&D Officer from STMicroelectronics, using his network to push Ferrari's technical development forward.

Ferrari's performance under Vigna

The results under Vigna have been consistent. Ferrari has grown revenues from €4.3 billion in 2021 to €7.1 billion in 2025, with net profit increasing from €833 million to €1.6 billion.

Notably, the number of patents filed in 2022 was also four times higher than the previous year, indicating how the company's pace of innovation had changed under his tenure. Ferrari's share price has almost doubled since Vigna took over as CEO, increasing from $168 to $305 as of April 2026.

The Luce

Under Benedetto Vigna's leadership, Ferrari has developed its first all-electric vehicle, the Luce, said to begin deliveries in late 2026. While it's an important step for Ferrari, Vigna explicitly states that the Luce should be seen as an addition to Ferrari's lineup, and not a replacement for combustion engines.

In terms of the vehicle itself, the company doesn't want to follow the industry trend of replacing physical buttons with touchscreens. Instead, the car has tactile buttons, dials, and switches to retain the driving experience and keep it feeling intuitive. Ferrari collaborated with Jony Ive and Marc Newson's company LoveFrom to help make that happen. If you are curious, you can take a look here.

The car is expected to have over 1,000 hp, and Vigna said that the swift, instantaneous acceleration could “disturb our brain”. Ferrari consulted with NASA and medical researchers to understand the threshold where extreme acceleration stops being exciting and starts causing discomfort. Vigna said this would help ensure the Luce still delivers the emotional thrill of a Ferrari.

Closing thoughts

Benedetto Vigna joined Ferrari with limited automotive experience. What he brought was a career built on innovation and a fundamental understanding of the technologies reshaping the industry he was entering. A few years in, revenues have grown from €4.3 billion to €7.1 billion, the organization has been redesigned, and the Luce is approaching its first customers. Few brands carry the weight Ferrari does, and so far, Vigna has only added to it.