Sharif Virani
CEO, SPUR Innovation Centre. Sharif Virani is an operator focused on building and scaling infrastructure-backed businesses at the intersection of AI, robotics, and real-world commerce. At SPUR, Sharif serves as CEO of the SPUR Innovation Centre and Chief of Staff of SPUR Data Centres, where he is advancing a compute-to-GDP model, aligning sovereign AI infrastructure, venture creation, and applied robotics to convert domestic compute capacity into measurable economic output. His work emphasizes increasing domestic compute intensity by ensuring AI systems are trained, deployed, and commercialized on Canadian infrastructure. This includes the development of a sovereign AI “neo-cloud” in Canada, designed to ensure data residency, support national priorities, and enable the commercialization of AI systems on domestic infrastructure. He is a leader in robotics and physical AI in Canada, having led the country’s first municipally sanctioned autonomous delivery pilot in the City of Markham in partnership with Robot.com, establishing a model for integrating robotics into public infrastructure while driving local economic activity, job creation, and national visibility.