British-Chinese musician and entrepreneur Shutian Cheng was born in Beijing and raised in London. He attended Westminster School while studying piano with Christopher Elton, Emeritus Head of Keyboard of the Royal Academy of Music. He is currently enrolled in the Bachelor’s program at the Royal Academy of Music and the Executive Programme in Artificial Intelligence at the Oxford Saïd Business School.

Cheng recalls being brought to concerts and musicals in his youth to have sparked an interest in pursuing music further at age 9, after which he studied piano with Danwen Wei and Jin Zhang of the Central Conservatory of Music. He also receives guidance from Stephen Kovacevich, Robert McDonald, and Bernd Goetzke.

Cheng was awarded 1st Prize at the International Windsor Piano Competition in 2022 and was invited to perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at Sinfonia Smith Square under conductor Guy Hopkins. He has since performed throughout the UK and Europe,

Passionate about popularising classical music, Cheng has amassed an online following of 33 thousand subscribers and 6 million views on YouTube. His videos have been viewed for over 200 thousand hours in 144 countries.

Cheng founded Sonautic Inc. in February 2025, a music EdTech company that pioneers the development of AI for music practice, partnering with NVIDIA through its Inception program. It is co-funded by UK Research and innovation alongside angel investors Andrew Mott, Stephen Cahill and Anthon Jahreskog and has received commitments from several major venture capital firms.