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 pursuing an Executive Programme on Artificial Intelligence at the Oxford Saïd Business School.

Cheng recalls being brought to concerts and musicals in his youth to have sparked his 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 in February 2025, an AI and music EdTech hybrid startup that pioneers the development of AI tools for musicians. It has since been admitted to the NVIDIA Inception Program, Sevan Startup Summit and IPHatch 2025 Finals. Sonautic raised funding from angel investors Anthon Jahreskog and Stephen Cahill in July 2025 and received interest from numerous venture capital firms.