The Walt Disney Company (Disney) Names Character.AI Chief as Its First-Ever Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in AI Transformation Gamble

【Financial News New York—Reporter Lee Byung-chul】  The world's largest entertainment company, Disney, has created the position of chief technology officer (CTO) for the first time in its history and recruited the CEO of AI company Character.AI. The move is seen as part of CEO Josh D'Amaro's effort to accelerate Disney's digital transformation around AI and streaming, moving beyond its traditional theme-park-and-film-centered business structure.
Disney announced on the 18th (local time) that it had appointed Character.AI CEO Karandeep Anand as its inaugural CTO. Anand will report directly to CEO Josh D'Amaro and oversee Disney's internal technology and infrastructure, as well as its data and AI platforms and product and engineering organizations.
Many technology employees who worked alongside Anand at Character.AI are also moving to Disney. Before leading Character.AI, Anand was a Silicon Valley technology expert who held executive positions at Meta Platforms and Microsoft. He was appointed CEO of Character.AI in June last year.
Character.AI offers a service that allows users to converse with AI chatbots modeled on real people or animated characters. Disney praised Anand for leading Character.AI's rapid growth while prioritizing user trust and safety as the platform expanded.
Anand's appointment is in line with the digital strategy being pursued by CEO D'Amaro. Since taking office, D'Amaro has stressed that Disney needs to move faster to connect directly with consumers online rather than relying solely on its traditional strengths of theme parks and movie theaters.
Disney+ is at the core of the strategy. D'Amaro envisions expanding Disney+ beyond a streaming service that simply offers movies and TV programs into a platform connecting consumers with all of Disney's businesses, including theme parks, films and games.
However, Disney's shift toward technology has not been entirely smooth. Because each business unit operated its technology organization independently for years, the company struggled to pursue a company-wide technology strategy. An integration project it was pursuing with OpenAI's video app Sora fell through after the app was discontinued, while a virtual-world project under development with Fortnite developer Epic Games has yet to produce clear results.
D'Amaro has also accelerated efforts to recruit talent from Silicon Valley. One day before bringing in Anand, Disney promoted Adam Smith, a former Google and YouTube executive, to chairman of its streaming business. By appointing an AI expert as its first CTO and putting a Google and YouTube veteran in charge of streaming, Disney under D'Amaro is increasingly seen as moving in earnest to transform itself into a technology company.



[email protected] Reporter Lee Byung-chul Reporter