Jeff Bezos is set to step down as chief executive of e-commerce giant Amazon, with Andy Jassy, the company’s longtime cloud-computing boss to take the reins.
According to an official statement, Bezos will transition to the role of executive chair this summer. This transition will mark the most radical shake-up in Amazon’s corporate ranks in its nearly 30-year history. In the new position, Bezos will focus on innovation from gadgets t groceries to streaming.
The 57-year-old founded Amazon in 1994 and has since morphed the one-time online bookstore into a mega-retailer with global reach in a slew of different categories. Amazon surpassed a $1 trillion market cap under Bezo’s leadership in January 2020, and now its worth more than $1.6 trillion.
“If you do it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. That yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive,” he said in an earnings release on Tuesday. “I am excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO.” In a letter to the employees, Bezos stated that he will be the Exec. Chair. “I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Any 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.”
The Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos, highlighted that Amazon evolved from an upstart online bookseller into one of the world’s most popular Internet marketplaces able to quickly deliver a vast catalogue of products and services.
“Bezo’s creation helped set in motion a massive change in the way people around the world shop, as people began buying toothpaste to car parts to groceries on their PCs and phones. Amazon also triggered a sea change in physical retail, accelerating the shuttering of shopping malls and stores. That shift has only accelerated as the COVID-19 pandemic fueled a surge in online shopping as worried customers shunned stores,” it said. “To make the e-commerce business run, Amazon had to create an array of computer data centers, stacked with rows upon rows of servers, to make sure the online marketplace could handle the growing business. That developed into a new market for the company, Amazon Web Services, a giant, profit-driving cloud computing operation that now powers websites around the world.”
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The CNBC said the company had kept it succession plans quiet, though onlookers speculated that either Jassy or Jeff Wilke, CEO of Amazon’s worldwide consumer business, would be Bezo’s eventual successor. In August, the US-based company announced Wilke will retire in 2021 and Jassy will become CEO in the third quarter.
Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer, on a media call said that the executive change was decided in consultation with the company’s board of directors. He said Bezos will remain very involved and have his fingerprints on lots of different parts of the company. Olsavsky described Jassy as a visionary leader who will bring his own skill set.
