Disney names Karandeep Anand as its first chief technology officer

In short: Disney has hired Karandeep Anand as its first chief technology officer, a new companywide job that starts October 2.

What happened

Disney said Karandeep Anand will become its first chief technology officer (CTO), effective October 2. A CTO is the senior leader who helps decide what technology a company builds and how it uses it.

Anand will report to Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro. Disney said Anand will oversee enterprise technology, infrastructure, data and AI platforms, product, and engineering. Infrastructure is the behind-the-scenes systems that keep apps and services running (like roads and power lines for a city). AI platforms are the shared tools and systems a company uses to build and run artificial intelligence.

Anand is joining from Character.AI, where he most recently served as CEO. Disney said he brings experience in infrastructure, consumer technology, and AI. Reuters reported that some Character.AI technical staff may follow him to Disney, which suggests Disney may be building a larger technology team around the new role.

Anand has also held leadership roles at Brex, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft. Reuters said he spent about 15 years at Microsoft and helped build parts of Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform (a way to rent computing power and storage over the internet instead of running it in your own building).

Why it matters

Disney has never had a dedicated, companywide CTO before. Creating this role signals that Disney wants a stronger, more coordinated approach to modernizing its internal systems and to using AI across its businesses. For customers, these kinds of changes often show up later as smoother apps and websites, more reliable services, and faster updates across Disney’s products.

Source: NYTimes