Disney's new tech boss ran a chatbot company.
The piece
Disney's new tech boss ran a chatbot company. Last week, Disney named Karandeep Anand, the CEO of Character.AI, its first-ever chief technology officer. He starts October second.
If you've ever been handed a new tool on a job and wondered who decided that, this is for you. The headline's a hire. The story's the org chart.
It's a brand-new role, and he reports straight to Disney's CEO, Josh D'Amaro. He'll oversee technology, data, AI platforms, product and engineering, across the whole company. And he's not coming alone. A number of his Character.AI engineers are expected to follow him.
His background is platforms: fifteen years at Microsoft, on the team that built Azure, then Meta, then Brex. Now, the honest part.
Right now Disney's AI mostly shows up in the parks: a tool for over two thousand Imagineers, digital twins for rides, booking. Not on sets. And D'Amaro says storytelling stays "human-centered, artist-driven, and creator-led."
Take him at his word. And notice that when tech reports straight to the top, the tools on your next production get chosen above production's head. Thirty years in, here's what I've seen.
The people who make it through a tech shift are the ones who can explain the set to the engineers. So be the translator. Learn enough about these tools to tell the tech side what actually breaks on a real set.
That job barely existed on an org chart before. At Disney, as of October second, it has a boss.
Source: TheWrap, 9/18/26.