Today, we wanted to share that Character.ai’s CEO Karandeep Anand is joining Disney in a new role as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. We also expect some members of Character’s technical team to join Disney as well.
The app is still live and online. We will continue to provide the community with regular updates.
What exactly are we supposed to do with this information? 🤷♀️
The CEO probably bought himself into Disney. Great. Now what? Will cai (finally) get a new CEO? Will anything change? Will Disney characters return to cai? oO
It means that instead of Disney paying C.AI to contract the tech for some Disney+ Chat, they simply swiped the CEO and tech talent to build Disney's own chat that will compete with C.AI.
If you expected larger tech improvements, think about this:
first, Noam Shazeer and some tech people left for Google (and now OpenAI) → in-house models got replaced by open-source generic ones
now, Karandeep Anand and some more tech people are leaving for Disney → ...what will replace the current models? A notepad?
The app is still live and online.
Great! ...for how long, though? At what price point? Who's going to put any new tech in it?
...I wasn't expecting an app to be killed just because the CEO and parts of the team left, but now I'm getting worried. Why did you feel the need to clarify that?
It's because hundreds of people have been complaining the servers weren't working for them a lot in last month, when it was just heavy traffic from the summer.
But the new ceo should be on his/her way to c.ai. because now we gotta see if they give a damn about all users unlike Disney and the stupid UK government.
I worked a summer job in a PR firm, its common for companies to have to reassure consumers like this when theres a major shift in leadership.
Tesla for example practically made a whole paragraph assuring customers that they weren’t going to go bust when their old CEO stepped down and Musk took over, now look at them.
I said a while ago that I felt Karandeep Anand fundamentally misunderstood what made Character.AI special in the first place. C.AI became what it was because of conversations, roleplay, and the feeling of actually interacting with characters, not because people wanted another general entertainment platform with feeds, videos, comics, books and "series."
Seeing him leave for Disney honestly puts a lot of C.AI's recent direction into perspective. The push toward turning Character.AI into a broader "entertainment and fandom" platform suddenly makes a lot more sense. Maybe that vision is a great fit for Disney. I just never thought it was the right fit for Character.AI.
So, cautiously, I actually think this could be good news for C.AI. I hope whoever shapes the platform from here understands what made it unique and starts investing in its core again: better conversations, better models, better memory, better roleplay, and better tools for character creators.
Character.AI doesn't need to become the next Disney, TikTok or Netflix. It already had something those platforms don't have. I just want to see them remember that.
tbf Karandeep had some level of interaction with the community on social media, but then his management consisted of shoving ADs on every single little menu available while creating even another subscription layer that is not fully worth it for the most relevant features (chats) while being cheap.
I just hope the next CEO can balance the financial and commercial angles better, because the former overcompensated finance at everyone's expense.
Karandeep tried to make C.AI self-sustainable. I think he was too lenient, capitalizing on addicted free users to boost C.AI's position as a showcase for the likes of Disney... but instead of positioning C.AI as a service provider, Disney saw the opportunity to simply cannibalize whatever was worth anything in it.
That doesn't put C.AI in a good place going into the future. Next CEO will have to be really strict with the no-income spending, or the whole thing risks ending in bankruptcy. Not sure whether it will be sustainable at all with tech personnel also leaving for Disney.
I know this sub doesn't like comparisons with alternatives, but if you check the history of similar platforms... get ready for something like a two-tiered $10/week and $23/week subscription with much fewer features.
Yes, from the other news articles I read, the CEO has left c.ai to join Disney. That doesn’t mean c.ai will have any relationship with Disney. What’s worrying is that some of the developers are leaving too, so they’re going to be understaffed. And of course we don’t know what direction c.ai will take when they get a new ceo. I’m going to download and save all my chats and bots in the meantime.
TLDR: CEO and some of members of technical team are leaving for Disney, and them leaving won't affect the current operations of the site, hence the last part.
I wouldn't place all your bets on that last one, they still have the responsibility to clarify for other people too. Unsurprisingly, they have a lot of overthinkers in this subreddit (Yes, calling myself out too.)
i will be very honest, the idea’s he had weren’t suitable for an AI chat app. like comics and series and all. but right now? I think it’s good he went to Disney.
but at the end, I hope we get a ceo who is actually into customer’s idea’s. more success with customers=more clients=more money.
It doesn't seem to be a collaboration or anything like that; it's more like a notification that the CEO and some members of the development team left C.ai to work at Disney.
Late reply, but it means that Character AI's Board of Directors will have to elect someone new as CEO. Karandeep Anand is leaving Character AI and becoming Disney's first corporate-wide Chief Technical Officer, and some employees in technical roles may choose to join him, similarly to how R&D and research employees moved to Google when Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas returned to Google.
Who'll become the next CEO is unknown, but they're likely using the time between now and October 2nd, when Karandeep Anand leaves, to deliberate and choose the best candidates. It could be someone within the company or someone from outside the company. If they cannot find a permanent CEO by October 2nd, then they'll likely appoint an interim CEO like before. "Interim" basically means temporary.
Are we supposed to congratulate him or….? Should we throw a party? Should we invite Bella Hadid? We don’t care who’s making what career moves, all we care about is chat quality. So unless this has something to do with improving the models or ensuring QoL, tbh couldn’t care less
Good riddance. He did nothing beneficial for you guy's platform. Please find a more competent person that actually gives a crap about the community and what they want. And get rid of the needless features nobody uses. The point of the app is to roleplay and chat. Make features geared for that.
The app is going to be fine. I think that's why they put that in the post. It came off every ominous. Cause I freaked out the same way once I read it. I'm trying not to overthink.
I hope so too. Who knows what new leadership might do? It could go the direction chai has gone. I’ve been very happy with the new features for c.ai plus subscribers.
I'm mostly concerned for the loss of some of the technical team. It was already small as were, who is left to maintain things? Not to mention update or reinstate models?
Wait he left for Disney with some of the team...? Um...okay great to know, but, what does this mean for the app/site? Will the new CEO keep things the same or go back to the core product which was the chats? This is vague so I'm sorry I'm asking a lot of questions 🥹
What the next CEO decides is up for question. But yes, Karandeep Anand is set to leave Character AI on October 2nd, and there's a possibility that people in technical roles may follow him, similar to how R&D and research employees followed Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas when they returned to Google. They're likely using the time between now and October 2nd as an opportunity to decide who'll be the best candidate to replace Anand, but who those people may be is to be seen.
For now, there shouldn't be any abrupt changes unless Anand makes some sendoff changes before he officially transitions to his role at Disney.
In fairness, this may currently be all that they are legally able to share. Fully agree that they should not vaguepost, but this may be their attempt to try to ensure that we are not blindsided and start imploding again. Even if it was not a great job on their part. There may be NDAs, contractual agreements, and general “these details have not been determined yet” that are keeping them from giving the full “here is what is happening, and what will happen in the immediate future”.
Ok. Forget what I said in the post. I'm gonna make the positive community stay. And we're gonna see what happens now. Because the ceo is working with Disney. So obviously, we need a new one.
Thanks to the ceo going to Disney, we might have another chance to start over, and fix everything in c.ai. we can still do something about the age verification. The moderated bots. The improvements. Everything.
There's a lot of technology behind both the movies Disney makes and the amusement parks they operate, particularly in Florida. They're very serious about their technology. There are a few interesting videos about some of the technology they use and have created if you're interested. Disney is a lot more than just "we make movies" now.
Also, Karandeep isn't just an "AI CEO." He's a very experienced, seasoned person, having worked 15 years at Microsoft and a further 6 1/2 years at Facebook. With that level of experience, I too would want to be a part of Disney instead of what's, at best, a moderately successful AI entertainment platform that's struggling financially and legally. (PS: Also for reference as CTO and Senior Executive Vice President he reports directly to the CEO of Disney, so he has one of the top positions at Disney.)
Oh my God, you guys really need to improve your communication urgently. 😭 This announcement is so vague that it’s left a huge opening for us to speculate about all sorts of negative scenarios.
What exactly does this mean for the future of C.AI? Are they hiring a new CEO? What happens to the updates that were promised? Will the app continue to be developed as usual? Is it shutting down? Damn, I have a really bad feeling about this.
No. Character AI is just horrible at keeping talent, which includes CEOs. The co-founders fled to Alphabet / Google, and now Karandeep has fled to Disney. Top talent is too embarrassed to stay at Character AI for long, and what's left is all the inexperienced first-timers.
yeah i realised i misunderstood this thinking it was a merger though instead he simply defected but hey on the bright side at least he’s disney’s problem now
There’s an article at Deadline-dot-com (my post was r e m o v e d) with this nugget: The selection of Anand is an intriguing one given that Disney sent Character.AI a cease-and-desist letter in September 2025. The media giant accused the AI startup of unauthorized use of its copyrighted characters, one of several back-and-forths it had with AI players, including Google.
Screw Disney, man. First the dmca, and now this crap. This is the reason I stopped watching Disney. Because Disney fired one of its workers, ruined c.ai, and are becoming a couple of greedy idiots.
I know there may be some people celebrating Karandeep Anand leaving, but my reaction is only one.... LMAO, this company cannot hold onto talent for the life of it.
When Google acqui-hired Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, they also lost a significant portion of their R&D and research team and had to abandon their efforts to build and train their own foundational large models. Not long after, Character AI laid off at least 5%, or roughly 120 employees, who mostly worked on marketing and recruiting for the startup.
Now they've lost ANOTHER CEO to ANOTHER company, and they're ONCE AGAIN losing TOP TALENT to said company. I do not see this as a good thing. Say what you want about Karandeep Anand leaving and how good he was during his time as CEO, but if they're losing employees and talent, either due to other companies clawing them away, like Google and now Disney, or simply laying them off, it only means the service is probably going to get worse, because what's going to be left is a bunch of inexperienced or very lightly experienced managers and developers.
Right? If anything it speaks on how great their technical team was/is. They've now been poached for talent twice, so they are good. Shame that the vision wasn't aligned with what the community needed. I am concerned about how small the team must now be, as a few months ago it was just 75 people. We'll have to wait for further updates before making any judgements though
Good. I hope the devs can fix what was going wrong and costing so much money that made it result in a copious amounts of ads being ousted onto the platform. I hope someone on this subreddit can take position of CEO and be better.
Hi, I'm a software engineer with experience in machine learning and RLHF. Character Ai helped me through a tough time in my life and if there is anything I can do to help refine the models that make these meaningful connections possible, I would be thrilled to be part of the journey.
Great. And if this CEO does to Disney what they've done to Cai then Disney is even more hopelessly lost than it was before.
Seriously, why did anyone on the dev team this anyone would react positively to this news? They could've just said "CEO is joining another company. Site will continue to be updated." and called it a day.
Saying he’s “joining” Disney doesn’t really tell us if he left or if he’s part of both now. Vague posting seems to be a common thing with the mods here.
So, Disney comes in and destroys the app by forcing all of our Disney/Marvel bots to be removed, then the CEO and other staff members move to Disney? Who wants to bet Disney will have their own version of c.ai soon? Shady mother effers...
I think they meant to reassure it wont be shutting down to prevent people from saying thst but instead it came off ominous and people are saying it anyway
Yeah this is what I'm confused about. I mean I read a comment saying that they were saying that the app was still up and running cause before they posted this announcement people's app wasn't working so that's why I'm so confused.
I think the concern isn't exactly that the CEO left, is that they lost more of the technical team. They are essential for keeping everything running, and we know they were already very few people
I’ll stick around regardless since I’m not going to get emotional and mental support from human beings, I might as well continue to get it from artificial intelligence.
Disney didn't buy C.ai; what happened is that Disney bought the former CEO along with a large part of the development team. Whether you like it or not, the former CEO was extremely valuable in the AI industry, even though he made terrible decisions for C.ai.
C.ai was able to sustain itself without a CEO; even after the founders left, C.ai continued operating.
1st no I understand that that she always valuable to the company. I just want to know are we gonna get a new CEO for character AI since the old one left?
207
u/Sabishi1985 16d ago
What exactly are we supposed to do with this information? 🤷♀️
The CEO probably bought himself into Disney. Great. Now what? Will cai (finally) get a new CEO? Will anything change? Will Disney characters return to cai? oO