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

Character.AI, the Google-backed AI chatbot provider with tens of millions of monthly active users, announced on Friday that Karandeep Anand, the former VP of Business Products at Meta, is joining the company as CEO.

Previously a board adviser to Character.AI, Anand is stepping into the CEO role at a pivotal moment for the chatbot provider, as the company tries to simultaneously grow its platform while combating child safety concerns. In recent months, Character.AI has added an array of new safety features in light of an active lawsuit, which alleges that one of the company’s chatbots played a role in the death of a 14-year-old Florida boy.

Anand comes to Character.AI with experience running advertising products that reached billions of users on Meta’s apps. Previously, Anand served as Microsoft’s head of product management, overseeing user experience on the company’s cloud platform, Azure. Most recently, Anand served as the president of the fintech startup Brex.

Anand is taking over Character.AI just over 10 months after Google hired away the startup’s co-founder and CEO, Noam Shazeer, who had previously led core AI teams at the Mountain View giant. At the time, Google also signed a non-exclusive agreement to use Character.AI’s technology.

Character.AI’s deal with Google prompted federal regulators to investigate the companies’ relationship over antitrust concerns. It’s one of many reverse-acquihire deals in the AI startup space that’s received regulatory scrutiny, alongside Microsoft’s deal with Inflection.AI.

Character.AI has raised more than $150 million in venture funding, largely from Andreessen Horowitz.

In a blog post, Anand said one of his first priorities would be making safety filters “less overbearing.” The new CEO noted that the company cares deeply about users safety, but that too often, “the app filters things that are perfectly harmless.”

Anand also said he plans to improve the quality of AI models on Character.AI’s platform, innovate around memory features, and increase transparency around decision making. He says many of these features are coming in the next 60 days.

Chatbots that are purely designed for entertainment, which Character.AI specializes in, are growing into a massive market for generative AI — a trend that’s been surprising to many. In 2024, 66% of the company’s users were between the age of 18 and 24, and 72% of the company’s users were women, according to data from Sensor Tower.