Disney chief Josh D’Amaro, in a move that shows he’s trying to position the Mouse House as a tech-forward entertainment company, has tapped veteran technology executive Karandeep Anand as its first chief technology officer. Most recently, Anand was CEO of Character.AI, a generative AI chatbot company. About a year ago, Disney accused Character.AI of “blatantly infringing” its copyrights and sent the tech startup a cease-and-desist letter demanding it remove Disney characters from its platform.
Character.AI complied with the request. No hard feelings, apparently: Disney announced that Anand will join the company as senior executive vice president and chief technology officer, a newly created position, effective Oct. 2. He will report directly to D’Amaro, who took over as CEO of Disney in March.
In addition to Anand’s appointment, “a number of Character.AI’s technical team” are expected to join Disney, the company said. Prior to Character.AI, Anand served president and chief product officer of financial technology company Brex. He also held several leadership roles at Meta’s Facebook, most recently as VP of ads and business products.
Earlier in his career, Anand had senior product and engineering leadership roles at Microsoft, where he worked for 15 years and was part of the team that built the Azure cloud-computing platform. He will work across the technology teams in Disney’s segments to “further modernize” how the company builds and delivers technology company-wide. Disney has not had a CTO per se, until now.
Its highest-ranking tech executive previously was Adam Smith, who on Thursday Disney promoted to chairman of direct-to-consumer for Disney Entertainment. In 2024 Disney hired Smith, former VP of product management at YouTube, as chief product and technology officer for Disney Entertainment and ESPN. He subsequently also served as co-president of DTC alongside Joe Earley, who is now in the newly created role of president of Disney Entertainment Television franchise and content strategy.
According to Disney, the hiring of Anand illustrates that D’Amaro is sharpening the company’s focus on technology as a growth driver. Since becoming CEO, D’Amaro has emphasized the need to strengthen Disney’s direct relationships with fans by creating a more connected Disney experience, with Disney+ as the digital centerpiece. Anand is well-suited to help achieve that goal, according to Disney, as he brings experience spanning consumer technology, infrastructure, product development and AI.
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