Indian-Origin Karandeep Anand to Become Disney’s First-Ever Chief Technology Officer

Oct 1 :
Adding a new chapter to the success story of the Indian Diaspora in the USA, Indian-origin Karandeep Anand is all set to become Disney’s first-ever Chief Technology Officer on 2 October 2026. Disney has created the company-wide CTO role for the first time and Anand will oversee enterprise technology, infrastructure, data and AI platforms, product and engineering across Disney. He will also serve as Senior Executive Vice President and report directly to Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro.

Currently based in San Francisco, Karandeep’s journey began in India. He grew up in a middle-class family and developed an early interest in computers. He studied Computer Science at IIIT Hyderabad and graduated with a B.Tech (Hons) in 2003. He also completed a Marketing and Strategy certification at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in 2007. His India to USA journey started through Microsoft.

Karandeep joined Microsoft as a product management intern in Hyderabad in 2000, while still pursuing his degree. In September 2002, he moved into Microsoft Azure and began working in the Greater Seattle area in the United States. He spent 13 years building and leading teams across Azure’s cloud platforms, products, payments and marketplace ecosystem. He later took on senior leadership roles at Facebook and Meta.

After Meta, he became President and Chief Product Officer at fintech company Brex. Karandeep then entered the fast-growing AI world as an adviser and later CEO of Character.AI. His career has crossed cloud computing, social platforms, fintech, and artificial intelligence. In 2026, IIIT Hyderabad honoured him with its Alumni Achiever Award.

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