SK Sharma, PhD

Senior Advisor, Warburg Pincus

SK Sharma is a scientist, corporate executive, and technology investor whose impact spans AI, ethics, and the creative industries. A proud Caltech alumnus, he earned his PhD in Physical Chemistry and Chemical Physics and an SM from Harvard and credits the Institute’s scientific rigor as the force behind his transformative work at the intersection of AI, music, and innovation. As Chief Analytics and AI Officer at Universal Music Group, he led the development of AI capabilities across the world’s largest music company through its $53.4 billion IPO in 2021, the largest in the history of the music industry. He invented and patented the Smart Audience platform, which uses AI to help artists find and grow their audiences, and he holds four granted U.S. patents in AI and machine learning. His earlier career spanned investment banking at Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and UBS, strategy consulting at Mitchell Madison Group and OC&C, and the founding of several technology ventures. He is the co-author of 18 peer-reviewed scientific research publications and serves on the editorial board of Scatterplot: The MAA Journal of Data Science. Recognized on Billboard’s 40 Under 40 and named to the inaugural Constellation Research AI 150, he served for over five years as an Entrepreneur in Residence at UC San Diego and delivered the 2023 commencement address at its Jacobs School of Engineering. He is an invited speaker at AI conferences, summits, and roundtables around the world.

SK currently serves as a Senior Advisor at Warburg Pincus, where he guides generative AI investments and value creation across the firm’s $100 billion portfolio, as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Caltech, and as a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, where his work addresses how society should govern the use of creative work to train AI and how to build licensing frameworks that are fair to creators without stifling innovation. As a first-generation college graduate who grew up in South Los Angeles, he is committed to strengthening the community that shaped his own path to Caltech. An avid surfer and kayaker based in coastal San Diego, SK also inexplicably pursues extreme trekking expeditions to the North and South Poles.