Character.AI taps Meta’s former VP of business products as CEO

Character.AI, an AI chatbot company backed by Google and boasting tens of millions of monthly users, has appointed Karandeep Anand as its new CEO. Anand, who previously served as Vice President of Business Products at Meta, steps into this role at a crucial time for the organization. The company is currently focused on expanding its platform while addressing significant child safety issues. In recent months, Character.AI has implemented a range of new safety features in response to an ongoing lawsuit. This legal action alleges that one of its chatbots contributed to the tragic death of a 14-year-old boy in Florida. Anand, who has a wealth of experience from Meta where he managed advertising products used by billions, aims to steer Character.AI through these turbulent waters. Before his engagement with Character.AI, Anand held a prominent position at Microsoft, leading product management for the Azure cloud platform. He also served as the president of fintech startup Brex. His appointment comes just over ten months after Google recruited Character.AI’s co-founder and former CEO, Noam Shazeer, who had a significant role in core AI projects at the tech giant. Following this, Google entered a non-exclusive agreement to utilize Character.AI’s technology, a move that has drawn the attention of federal regulators concerned about potential antitrust issues. Character.AI has successfully raised over $150 million in venture capital funding, primarily from Andreessen Horowitz. In a recent blog post, Anand emphasized that one of his immediate goals is to enhance user safety features while making them less restrictive. He acknowledged the company’s commitment to safety but expressed that many harmless interactions are being unnecessarily filtered out. Anand also plans to focus on improving the quality of AI models, innovating memory features, and increasing transparency in the decision-making processes of the platform. He hinted that many of these enhancements are expected to roll out within the next two months. As the market for entertainment-focused chatbots continues to expand, particularly among younger audiences—66% of its users aged between 18 and 24 and 72% being female—Character.AI is poised to capitalize on this growing interest in generative AI.