Disney’s first CTO is Character.AI’s former CEO
The House of Mouse has poached Karandeep Anand from the chatbot company.
The House of Mouse has poached Karandeep Anand from the chatbot company.
by
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Sep 18, 2026, 6:27 PM UTC
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Charles Pulliam-Moore
is a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.
You would think that a multimedia conglomerate as large as Disney would have a few chief technology officers by now, but the company has just appointed someone to the position for the very first time.
Today, Disney announced that Karandeep Anand is joining the company as its new CTO. Anand will report directly torecently appointed CEO Josh D’Amaro, and he will head up the company’s infrastructure, product, engineering, and data / AI platforms teams. Anand comes to Disney fromchatbot startup Character.AI, where he served as CEO for just over a year andoversaw the company’s push into microdramas.
Anand jumping ship to Disney comes as a bit of a surprise considering how this time last year, the company wassending Character.AI cease and desist lettersdue to the startup’s tools infringing on copyrighted IP. But Anand’s hiring could be a sign of how Disney wants to move forward with AI now that itspartnership with OpenAI has fallen apart.
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- Charles Pulliam-Moore
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