Shazam nabs a new CTO to help it break into augmented reality

Shazam is best known as a music-identifying app, but the privately-held company also wants to break into some of the most exciting fields in tech, such as augmented reality.

The company has nabbed a new CTO, Richard Sharp, to help develop these technologies. He joined Shazam as CTO last month after stints at Google and Yieldify, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Sharp holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, where he did work on ubiquitous computing, or some of the same AR concepts that Shazam has recently been exploring.

"I was very excited to join Shazam," Sharp told Business Insider. "It's a huge user base and a lot of data, we're sitting on a goldmine of data, that lets us see how the world interacts with music, and interacts with physical products as well."

The data is one of the big reasons why he joined the company. "Internally, we've shown we can predict what's going to be in the top 40," based on Shazam data, he said.

Sharp is going to be based in London. Shazam has three main engineering offices, one in London, one in Redwood City, California, and one in San Diego, which is close to key partners like Snapchat.