NRI Karandeep Anand Appointed to Newly Created CTO Role at The Walt Disney Company

Los Angeles/ Sept 25, 2026
NRIpress.club/Ramesh/ A.Gary Singh

NRI Karandeep Anand, The Walt Disney Company, has appointed as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, marking the creation of the company’s first-ever CTO position. Anand will officially join Disney on October 2, 2026, and report directly to CEO Josh D’Amaro.

In his new role, Anand will oversee Disney’s enterprise technology, infrastructure, data and AI platforms, product development and engineering. He will work across Disney’s business segments to modernize the company’s technology capabilities and strengthen its digital services.

Anand most recently served as CEO of Character.AI. Previously, he held senior leadership positions at Meta and Microsoft, where he spent 15 years and worked as part of the team that helped build the Azure platform. He also served as President and Chief Product Officer at fintech company Brex.

Disney said Anand’s appointment reflects the company’s focus on using technology and artificial intelligence to support creativity and create more connected experiences for fans worldwide. Several members of Character.AI’s technical team are also expected to join Disney.

BIOGRAPHY:

Karandeep Anand is a technology and product leader with more than two decades of experience across cloud computing, social media, fintech and artificial intelligence.

Anand graduated from the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) in 2003 with a BTech (Honours) in Computer Science and Engineering.

He spent 15 years at Microsoft, where he held senior product and engineering leadership roles and was part of the team that helped build the Azure cloud platform. He later joined Facebook (Meta), where he served in several leadership positions, most recently as Vice President of Ads and Business Products.

Anand subsequently joined fintech company Brex, serving as President and Chief Product Officer. In June 2025, he became CEO of Character.AI, the generative AI chatbot platform, where he led the company during a period of significant growth.

In September 2026, The Walt Disney Company announced that Anand would become its first company-wide Chief Technology Officer,