Character.AI Appoints Former Meta VP of Business Products as New CEO

Character.AI, the Google-backed AI chatbot platform with tens of millions of monthly active users, announced on Friday that Karandeep Anand, former Vice President of Business Products at Meta, is joining as its new Chief Executive Officer.

Anand, who previously served as a board adviser to Character.AI, assumes the CEO role at a critical juncture. The company is striving to expand its platform while addressing serious child safety concerns. In response to an ongoing lawsuit alleging that one of its chatbots contributed to the death of a Florida teenager, Character.AI has recently rolled out a suite of new safety features.

Anand brings extensive experience in managing advertising products that reached billions of users across Meta's applications. His career includes a tenure as Microsoft's head of product management for the Azure cloud platform, where he oversaw user experience. Most recently, he served as President of the fintech startup Brex.

Anand's appointment comes just over ten months after Google hired away the startup's co-founder and former CEO, Noam Shazeer, who had led core AI teams at Google. That move was accompanied by a non-exclusive agreement for Google to utilize Character.AI's technology.

This partnership with Google attracted scrutiny from federal regulators, who launched an antitrust investigation into the relationship. It is among several "reverse-acquihire" deals in the AI sector facing regulatory examination, similar to Microsoft's arrangement with Inflection AI.

To date, Character.AI has secured over $150 million in venture funding, with Andreessen Horowitz as a primary investor.

In a blog post, Anand stated that a top initial priority is to refine the platform's safety filters, making them "less overbearing." He emphasized the company's deep commitment to user safety but acknowledged that the current system often blocks "perfectly harmless" content.

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Anand also outlined plans to enhance the quality of AI models on the platform, innovate with memory features, and increase transparency in decision-making. He indicated that many of these improvements are slated for release within the next 60 days.

The market for purely entertainment-focused chatbots, Character.AI's specialty, is expanding rapidly—a trend that has caught many industry observers by surprise. According to Sensor Tower data from 2024, 66% of the company's users are aged 18 to 24, and 72% are women.