Karandeep Anand has been named the Walt Disney Company’s first chief technology officer, a newly created role that begins October 2 and reports directly to CEO Josh D’Amaro. Anand joins Disney after serving as CEO of Character.AI and previously as president and chief product officer at Brex. CNBC reported the appointment, while Reuters placed the move in Disney’s broader technology push.
Anand will oversee enterprise technology, infrastructure, data and AI platforms, product and engineering, working across Disney’s segment technology teams. The remit gives one executive a company-wide view of systems that have historically sat across a complex entertainment group, from streaming and parks to studios and consumer products.
A new seat for a more connected technology stack
Disney is not replacing a departing CTO; it is creating the position as the company gives technology a more explicit place in the corporate structure. D’Amaro said Anand’s experience will help Disney approach new technologies with greater coordination. For Anand, the move is a return to a large, established company after leading Character.AI and earlier spending 15 years at Microsoft and six years at Facebook.
The appointment also carries a useful tension. Disney had accused Character.AI of hosting unauthorized versions of its characters in 2025, yet the company has now hired its former CEO to help set its technology agenda. That history is relevant context, not the mandate: Anand’s operating brief is to build infrastructure and platforms that can work across Disney’s businesses.
The role connects with Encafeinados’ earlier look at the org chart as an AI-governance question. The practical test will be whether a single technology leader can make data, product and engineering feel like one enterprise without flattening the distinct needs of each Disney unit.
The job is deliberately broader than an AI title. Disney’s announcement places infrastructure, data, product and engineering under the same enterprise remit, which should give Anand a seat in decisions about how technology supports the company’s creative and consumer businesses. His background is unusually cross-sector: he spent 15 years at Microsoft, worked at Facebook from 2015 to 2021, advised Character.AI’s board and later became its CEO. That mix is part of the reason the appointment stands out.
