One of the largest e-commerce company Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos announced that he will be stepping down as the Amazon CEO and become executive chairman, as the company reported its third consecutive record profit and quarterly sales above $100 billion for the first time.
In an Email to his employees Jeff Bezos said, "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."
This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, "What's the internet?" Blessedly, I haven't had to explain that in a long while. Today, we employ 1.3 million talented, dedicated people, serve hundreds of millions of customers and businesses, and are widely recognized as one of the most successful companies in the world.
"As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions. I've never had more energy, and this not about retiring. I'm super passionate about the impact I think these organisations can have." Bezos said in an email to Amazon employees.
Who is Amazon's new CEO Andy Jassy ?
Jassy joined Amazon in 1997, after attending Harvard Business School. Early in his career, he served as the first technical adviser to Bezos. The unit he leads, Amazon Web Services, has reshaped how companies buy technology, by simplifying computing services into their component pieces and offering them essentially for rent over the internet.
The business was initially dismissed by enterprise software giants like Oracle Inc. before that company and others quickly sought to emulate elements of AWS's strategy.
In the same earnings report in which Amazon said Jassy, 53, would succeed Jeff Bezos later this year, the company reported that AWS pulled in $12.7 billion in sales in the fourth quarter, making the unit a $50 billion business on an annual basis.
His challenge as CEO will be to understand the consumer and logistics parts of the business as well as he knows AWS. Jassy over the years has shown a passion for social and philanthropic issues not often associated with Amazon's sometimes single-minded founding CEO.