Bezos wrote a letter to his employees in February informing them about his decision to step down as the CEO. He will now take over as the executive chairman of the company in the third quarter of this year. Bezos will be replaced by the head of Amazon’s cloud division Amazon Web Services (AWS) Andy Jassy.
Interestingly, Amazon was incorporated in July 5, 1994 and Bezos will be formally stepping down on the same date. He had said that the timing is sentimental, but he is excited to assume a new role. Bezos has been associated with Amazon for over three decades now and was named the world’s richest man in September 2020. His net worth had crossed $202 billion after an increase of $5.22 billion in a single day.Bezos was later replaced by Elon Musk as the richest man in the world.
Announcing his exit from the company, Bezos had said in a letter to his employees, “”I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO. In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.”
Bezos said that being the CEO of Amazon is big responsibility and hence it is consuming. As an Executive Chair he will be involved in important Amazon initiatives but will find time to focus on other important initiatives including Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post and more.
Bezos will be replaced by Jassy, who has been in Amazon for more than 25 years. Jassy, who currently heads one of the most important divisions in Amazon, joined the company in 1997 right after completing his graduation.
Jassy started Amazon’s AWS, Amazon’s cloud service platform in 2006. The company provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments. The service goes up against Microsoft Corp’s Azure and Alphabet Inc’s Google Cloud. The latest earnings report found that AWS raked in $12.7 billion in sales in the fourth quarter.
