Dr. Christoph Grote
Senior Vice President AI & Innovation,
BMW Group

Christoph has worked for the BMW Group in Munich since 1997. His responsibilities always ventured between innovation and delivery. 

After studying physics at Ruprecht-Karls-University in Heidelberg, Christoph obtained his PhD in physics from the University of Cambridge, UK. After three years at McKinsey & Company, he joined BMW, where he was responsible for diverse subject areas - batteries, fuel cell technology and the cockpit – before managing the series development of information and communication systems. He was appointed as Senior Vice President of Research, Advanced Technologies and Innovation in 2014 with offices in Munich, Mountain View (CA), Tokyo and Shanghai. Since 2016 he has been serving as BMW’s Senior Vice President of electronics and software, architecting and delivering multiple generations of BMW’s electronics system over ten years. 

Since the end of 2025, Christoph is responsible for artificial intelligence, innovation and the international software sites in BMW’s R&D organization. Christoph drives BMW’s international research and innovation with a particular focus on artificial intelligence in vehicle functions as well as development processes. His scope encompasses new customer functionalities, SW-technologies and underlying HW. Emerging architecture matters as much to him as tomorrow’s value chain. 

Christoph’s passion lies in pioneering technological innovations that revolutionize the human-centric driving experience while simultaneously enhancing the results, the speed and the efficiency and of the underlying development processes.