Doing the right AI - and doing AI right.
Shobhit Varshney is Chief AI Officer at UnitedHealth Group Optum, where he brings AI strategy, AI platform, and AI delivery together under one unified mission - accountable for how AI is built, governed, and scaled across the enterprise in service of better health outcomes, lower friction for patients and clinicians, and a health system that works better for everyone. His scope includes United AI Studio (UHG's enterprise AI platform), AI delivery in partnership with engineering and data science teams across the business, and Responsible AI with appropriate guardrails and human oversight on the decisions that matter most - all guided by his philosophy: doing the right AI, and doing AI right.
Shobhit brings a rare combination of technical depth, commercial breadth, and operating experience inside highly regulated enterprises. Before Optum, he served as Global Head of AI at Citi (2025–2026), leading firmwide AI strategy across one of the world's largest financial institutions. Prior to that, he spent 13 years at IBM, most recently as VP and Senior Partner leading Data & AI Consulting across the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. He personally led multi-year AI transformations for PepsiCo, Elevance Health, CVS Health, and Merck, and championed IBM's own enterprise agentic AI deployment as Client Zero. Earlier, he led technical analytics product development at Bloomberg for quantitative trading and market research.
Shobhit's recognitions include LinkedIn Top AI Voice, Tech Leader of the Year, AI Top 50, and Most Inspirational Tech Leader, among other industry honors. He has delivered 100+ keynotes at conferences including CES, NVIDIA GTC, Google Next, AWS re:Invent, IBM Think, and Gartner Summit, and his perspectives have appeared in CNN, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Bloomberg. He holds four AI patents and is the author of the popular AI with Whiskey newsletter.
Shobhit holds an MBA with distinction and an MS in Computer Science from Cornell University, and a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Arkansas, summa cum laude. He lives in Dallas with his wife and two children, enjoys robotics and photography, and is working toward his whiskey sommelier certification.
More at shobhitvarshney.com.
