Karandeep Anand Named Disney’s New Chief Technology Officer

India-West News Desk

BURBANK, CA- Karandeep Anand, the former CEO of Character.AI, will join The Walt Disney Company as its Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer on October 2, taking on a newly created role, Disney announced September 18.

Anand will report to Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro. As CTO, he will oversee the company’s enterprise technology, infrastructure, data and AI platforms, product and engineering.

He will also work with technology teams across Disney’s businesses as the company continues efforts to modernize how it builds and delivers technology. Several members of Character.AI’s technical team are expected to join Disney as part of the move.

D’Amaro said Anand’s background includes infrastructure, consumer technology and AI. He said the appointment supports Disney’s focus on storytelling, using technology to support creativity and operating as “One Disney.”

Anand said he has admired Disney for combining storytelling and technology and that he was looking forward to working with its creative teams. He also said he hoped to build on Disney’s existing technology capabilities to help the company connect with fans around the world with its stories and characters in new ways.

Anand headed Character.AI during a period of rapid growth and focused on user trust and safety as the platform expanded, according to Disney.

Before Character.AI, Anand was President and Chief Product Officer at financial technology company Brex. He previously held several leadership positions at Meta, most recently serving as Vice President of Ads & Business Products.

Anand spent 15 years at Microsoft earlier in his career, holding senior product and engineering positions. He was also part of the team that built the Azure platform.

He holds a degree in Computer Science from the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad