New York: Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos will step down as the company’s CEO on Monday, the company’s 27th birthday.
He’s handing over the baton to Andy Jassy, an Amazon veteran who built and ran Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s dominant cloud-computing business.
Amazon’s market value is now $1.7 trillion, which trails just Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT) among U.S. listed companies.
Bezos, 57, 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 from gadgets to groceries to streaming. Amazon surpassed a $1 trillion market cap under Bezos’ leadership in January of last year — it’s now worth more than $1.6 trillion.
Jassy joined Amazon in 1997 and has led Amazon’s Web Services cloud team since its inception. AWS continues to drive much of Amazon’s profit.
Amazon’s chief financial officer, Brian Olsavsky, said on a media call that the executive change was decided in consultation with Amazon’s board of directors. He said Bezos will remain very involved and have his fingerprints on lots of different parts of the company. Olsavsky said Jassy is a visionary leader who will bring his own skill set but that Amazon expects a lot of continuity with the transition.
Bezos said he will stay engaged in important Amazon projects but will also have more time to focus on the Bezos Earth Fund, his Blue Origin spaceship company, The Washington Post and the Amazon Day 1 Fund.
