Overview
- Disney announced on Friday that Karandeep Anand will join as senior executive vice president and corporate chief technology officer, reporting to CEO Josh D’Amaro and starting on October 2.
- Anand will oversee enterprise technology, infrastructure, data and AI platforms, product and engineering to unify separate tech stacks across Disney’s streaming, parks and content businesses.
- The company said a number of Character.AI’s technical staff are expected to move to Disney with Anand, making the hire both an executive appointment and a small technical talent transfer.
- Anand brings senior experience from Character.AI, Brex, Meta and a 15-year tenure at Microsoft where he worked on the Azure cloud platform.
- Markets reacted negatively to the news with Disney shares falling about 2.5%, and the appointment raises questions about how Disney will balance faster AI deployment with past legal and safety disputes tied to consumer chatbots.