Disney has hired Karandeep Anand, the former CEO of Character.AI, as its first chief technology officer. Anand joins as senior executive vice president and chief technology officer, a newly created role, starting October 2, and will report directly to CEO Josh D’Amaro. Disney announced the hire on September 18.
A number of Character.AI’s technical team members are expected to join Disney along with him.
What Anand Will Run
Anand will oversee enterprise technology, infrastructure, data and AI platforms, product, and engineering. He will work across the technology teams in each of Disney’s business segments to modernize how the company builds and delivers technology.
D’Amaro said Anand “brings a rare mix of experience across infrastructure, consumer technology and AI” and called him “an expert builder and strategist, technical and product-minded, with sharp instincts for what fans actually want.”
Anand said he has “admired Disney my entire life” for the way it blends storytelling with technology, and that he wants to help connect fans with Disney’s stories and characters in new ways.
Who Anand Is
Anand most recently ran Character.AI, the consumer chatbot company. Before that, he was president and chief product officer at the financial technology company Brex. He held several leadership roles at Meta’s Facebook, most recently vice president of ads and business products, and spent 15 years at Microsoft, where he was part of the team that built the Azure platform.
A Year After The Cease-And-Desist
The hire comes a year after Disney sent Character.AI a cease-and-desist letter in September 2025, accusing the startup of using its copyrighted characters without permission.
Disney later reached a deal with OpenAI in late 2025 that traded an investment for use of Disney characters. That agreement fell apart months later when OpenAI shut down its Sora video generator.
The announcement came a day after Disney named Adam Smith chairman of Direct-to-Consumer, as D’Amaro reshapes Disney’s leadership around what he calls One Disney. Technology in service of creativity is one of the three priorities D’Amaro has set for the company, alongside storytelling and operating as One Disney.
It also landed the same day Disney’s legal chief sent his department a memo warning that it will be a much smaller organization as the company leans on new technology and prepares for more layoffs.
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