Karandeep Anand was running Character.AI a year ago, when Disney’s lawyers told it to stop using Disney characters. On Oct. 2 he starts as Disney’s chief technology officer, reporting to the CEO.
Disney has never had a chief technology officer. It has one now, and the hire comes with a backstory.
Karandeep Anand joins the company Oct. 2 as senior executive vice president and chief technology officer, a role that did not exist before. He reports directly to chief executive Josh D’Amaro, which puts technology in the room where the biggest decisions get made for the first time in the company’s history.
Until recently, Anand was the chief executive of Character.AI. In September 2025, Disney sent Character.AI a cease-and-desist letter.
Who is Karandeep Anand, Disney’s new CTO?
Somebody with an unusually broad résumé for an entertainment company.
Anand spent 15 years at Microsoft. He moved to Facebook, now Meta, where he held several leadership roles. He was then president and chief product officer at Brex, the corporate finance company, before taking over as chief executive at Character.AI.
D’Amaro described the appeal in the announcement. “Karandeep brings a rare mix of experience across infrastructure, consumer technology and AI, and will be a vital addition to Disney’s senior leadership team,” he said.
Infrastructure, consumer technology and AI. That is the job description, and none of those three words is about storytelling.
What did Disney accuse Character.AI of in 2025?
Using its characters in ways Disney found alarming.
The cease-and-desist Disney sent in September 2025 alleged that the platform “adds a sadistic and perverted twist to Disney’s characters by using AI models that engage young people in inappropriate conversations.” Disney’s complaint centered on chatbots built around its characters getting into subject matter no Disney character should be discussing with a kid.
Character.AI compared its user-created chatbots to fanfiction at the time.
That dispute was with the company, not with Anand personally, and Disney’s announcement does not mention it. But the sequence is unusual enough that it is the first thing anyone in the industry noticed.
Why is Disney creating a CTO role now?
Because technology stopped being a department.
Disney has had chief technology officers inside divisions before. Aaron LaBerge held the title at ESPN and then across Disney Entertainment before leaving in 2024. What has never existed is a single technology executive for the whole company reporting to the chief executive.
This lands the same week Disney handed Adam Smith, a 20-year Google and YouTube veteran, sole control of Disney+ and Hulu. It follows the hiring of Erin Teague from YouTube for product management and Tony Donohoe from Walmart to run advertising platforms. Apple’s longtime chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, joined Disney’s board.
That is a pattern, and it has picked up considerable speed in the last twelve months.
Who else is coming with him?
A chunk of his old technical team.
Reporting on the hire indicates that a number of Character.AI’s technical staff are expected to follow Anand to Disney. Bringing a team along is standard for senior technology hires and it is also the fastest way to build a capability from nothing.
Disney has not said what that team will work on.
What this means for Disney+ and the parks
Not much you will see next month, and possibly quite a lot after that.
Disney’s most visible near-term technology project is merging Disney+ and Hulu into a single app, which the company has committed to finishing by the end of this calendar year. That deadline is roughly three months away and the app has not launched.
On the parks side, Disney has been rebuilding its planning tools. The My Disney Experience app is getting a redesign with AI-assisted search, and DisneyWorld.com rolled out a guided search tool on Sept. 15. Meanwhile the company shut down the Play Disney Parks app on Sept. 16 after eight years without announcing a replacement.
There is one more piece of context that makes this hire interesting. Disney is currently suing Midjourney over AI image generation, in a case where Midjourney’s defense argues that Disney itself uses generative AI internally.
Disney is hiring AI leadership and litigating against AI companies at the same time. Both of those are now, in some form, this new job.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
Pirates and Princesses is your destination for Disney news, theme park updates, and the pop culture you love. From Disney cruises and travel tips to Disney fashion, food, collectibles, and movie news, PNP covers it all. Visit us at piratesandprincesses.net for daily coverage. Follow PNP on Facebook and Instagram, and listen to the Pirates & Princesses podcast on Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
Hat Tips:
Deadline, first reporting on the Karandeep Anand appointment, the Oct. 2 start date and the reporting line to Josh D’Amaro
WDW News Today, the connection to Disney’s September 2025 cease-and-desist and its verbatim language, Anand’s Microsoft, Meta and Brex background, and the Character.AI technical staff expected to follow
The Walt Disney Company, the D’Amaro statement
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